


can i have a ride home? (im at a party and i dont know anyone)

by myrmeraki



Series: West Wing High [1]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - High School, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Like, M/M, Song Lyrics, Tenderness, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking, its about: the yearning, josh goes to therapy challenge, no beta we die like men, you know how it be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27290251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmeraki/pseuds/myrmeraki
Summary: Five times they don't say goodbye and one time they do
Relationships: Amy Gardner/Josh Lyman, Donna Moss & Sam Seaborn, Joey Lucas/Donna Moss, Josh Lyman & Donna Moss, Josh Lyman/Sam Seaborn, Sam Seaborn & Toby Ziegler, like they are all friends idk what to tell y'all
Series: West Wing High [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108661
Comments: 19
Kudos: 51





	1. down on the couch with your boyfriend i need this, the smell of his hair the taste of his lips

**Author's Note:**

> promise it's not as sad as it sounds. i listened to music in the car one day and then said "alright, time to write" and set down to get this baby out. i never thought i'd write or post fanfic for this fandom, let alone have it be a high school au?? it's kind of all over the place, but hey, inspiration strikes and i wrote this instead of my college essays! first thing i've publicly posted so please be nice, kudos and comments greatly appreciated <3

Sam’s always had a little bit of a problem saying “no” to things. 

Of course he’ll run for student government, if Dr. Bartlet herself had suggested it to him. And of course he’d work on the school newspaper, how could he say no if Toby had put such a good word in. And turning down captaining debate would have been stupid, given it was one of his favorite things to do, next to Model UN. Which, of course, he’d take a leadership position. Of course, of course, of course. They were all things he’d love to do, so why would he turn them down?

That meant he was almost constantly swimming in work, treading with the water at his neck. And, most times, he didn’t mind. Most times, he loved the healthy amounts of stress. He was just saying, that he should practice saying no more often. 

It also means that when Josh stops him on Thursday and asks him to go with him to Amy’s party that Friday, Sam can’t say no. 

This was most likely because out of all the people in the world, Sam could never ever say no to Josh Lyman.

“So, what d'ya say Sammy? I could drive you there, and we’d stay at Amy’s.” 

There are textbooks in Sam’s hands, and an essay for his Honors Government class due Monday, and prep to do for the debate tournament Sunday.

There’s also Josh with his hand on the lockers, Josh in that striped shirt, Josh smiling at him. The smiling. He can’t say no. 

“Alright. You’ve beaten me down, fine,” Sam grumbles and twirls the combination lock.

Josh pumps his fist in the air as he shoulders his backpack over his arm.

“This is gonna be great, really. Amy’s parents are out of town too so,” Josh widens his eyes and wiggles his eyebrows up and down conspiratorially.

Because Josh is Sam’s best friend, because Sam has mastered the art of appearing normal, he rolls his eyes at Josh and shoves him with the side of his shoulder instead of quieting inside himself and pressing his hands to his ears. 

Sam knows he shouldn’t hate Amy. And he doesn’t. But he wants to. She’s pretty, she’s _really_ smart, and she doesn’t put up with Josh’s bullshit, meaning she and Sam probably should have been great friends. If not for the fact they were hooking up on and off. 

“Friends with benefits? Is that what they call it?” As Josh called it one day at the library when Sam finally gathered every spare part of courage he’d hoarded and asked him, “So what’s going on with you and Amy?” 

“She’s really great and all, but neither of us want a real thing, I guess.” 

Sam had to keep from pumping his fist in the air and whooping for joy, because best friends didn’t act excited when their best friend didn’t get the girl.

“Can’t be tied down?” He joked, and Josh had said, “You know it,” with a laugh that made Sam’s stomach warm, and that had been that. 

The only person that knew was CJ Cregg, class president, editor in chief, leader of the morning announcements, and the student bodies resident therapist friend. She also took Sam under her wing two years ago when he moved from California, and was the person he was closest to other than Josh.

“I don't know if this is a good idea CJ,” Sam says over the phone while rushing through his Government essay, just to get it done with. He could do these in his sleep and he knew it. 

“Sam, it’s a party. You don’t have to be around Josh the whole time, you don’t have to be near Amy the whole time!”

“Yeah I know, but-“

“Samuel. If you’re really this worried, stay with me and the girls.”

“Yeah that's what I need, to be one of the girls, that’ll really put everyone off the idea I’m gay.”

He hears CJ sigh and fumble around. She’s probably getting dressed and putting on makeup and editing an article, all as they speak.

“What sounds better, _unjustified_ or _indefensible_?” Sam hovers over the page with his pen.

“Indefensible. Listen, Sam, Really-” There’s a bit of static and Sam scribbles the words as CJ reorients herself doing whatever she’s doing. 

“Stick with Ed and Larry, or Will, or Toby or Danny. Don’t be around him while he’s with Amy- _shit_.”

There’s a thumping sound and Sam hears her voice drift from the phone and then come back. 

“My damn cat. I know it’s tough Sam,” she says. Sam hears real sincerity in her voice, and as always it calms him.

“Really, stay away from him if he’s with Amy, they’re gonna be handsy, and I know how it feels but it’s better to just not see him,” CJ trails off and Sam can’t help but wonder if she’s speaking from personal experience, the way she words herself.

“Thank you CJ. I couldn’t do it without you.” Sam winds the cord of the phone around his finger and lowers his voice, as if the empty house could incriminate him.

“I’ll see you there.”

“See ya.”

Sam hears the _click_ of the receiver and, soon, the dreaded dial tone. 

He hangs the phone up and checks his watch. Josh would be here in ten minutes to pick him up, and for whatever reason, he is obsessing over what to wear. 

Sam feels like a stupid girl getting ready for a date, which makes his cheeks burn, because this couldn’t be farther from it. Wanting to look nice-casual on the off chance his best friend might notice it before he spent the rest of the party drinking and making out with a girl, that is. 

Sam picks the phone up and then hangs it up a few times over, until the click feels just right, and takes the stairs two at a time before getting to his bedroom.

He settles on this blue sweater and a dress shirt underneath, just so he can pop the collar up and look put together. Josh’ll call him a nerd, he already knows. 

The doorbell rings and after grabbing his keys and wallet, Sam is out the door and leaving a note for his parents saying he’s staying with Josh and would be back next morning.

Josh has his car parked just out of their driveway, hazard lights on. It’s not so much _his_ car as it is Josh’s parents old minivan that only Josh uses because he’s not allowed to touch their actual car. It’s dinged up in places and there’s a dent in the front that Josh swears to his parents up and down wasn’t him, and Sam would never tell the Lymans that he was with Josh when he hit the back of a bus in the city. 

“Sam, we’re going to a party, not the library,” Josh says as soon as Sam closes the door to his car, and he regrets going to this thing at all.

Josh is wearing his stupid green Whalers sweatshirt that’s got that stupidly low collar, so Sam can see the edge of his collarbone. And he’s wearing sunglasses in the car, who does that? More importantly, why does Sam like it? 

Sam forces up a laugh as he puts the seatbelt on and messes with the edge of his sweater instead of looking at Josh as he pulls out of Sam’s driveway. 

He’s put on cologne or something, too, Sam realizes when Josh turns over the seat and puts the car in reverse. It could be that, it could be detergent, it could be deodorant, Sam doesn’t know and doesn’t care. He takes a deep breath through his nose and out through his mouth. It's supposed to calm him down, but instead there's _Josh Josh Josh_ inside his head and smelling like freshness and cotton and Sam really does think this was a bad idea. 

“You alright? You don’t look too good.” 

“Thanks,” Sam says, dripping with sarcasm. “I’m a little stressed for debate.”

“You do this every tournament, and every time you absolutely kick ass.” Josh speeds up to get through a red light, and Sam grabs at the side of the door with a huff.

“You’re the best writer and speaker I’ve ever met, and you let suburb kids get under your skin,” Josh continues as if he didn’t just pull that driving stunt.

“I’m not gonna _live_ to the tournament,” Sam grumbles. But inside his heart is pounding and taking notes and saving Josh’s words onto a tape to play over and over until it corrupts. 

_The best I’ve ever met._

Sam spends the rest of the time teasing Josh about his driving and staring at Josh while he concentrates on the road. His skin’s still hanging onto it’s summer tan even as they’re sitting in the middle of fall. His hair, curled at the base of his neck, longer and fluffy falling just over his forehead. His voice as he talks about nothing at all, words filtering in and out of Sam’s head like music. Sam’s thinking about how he wants to gently run his finger over the bridge of Josh’s nose when the car jerks to a stop in front of Amy’s house. There’s a few cars there already, and Amy herself gets out of one.

“Hey Sam!” She waves at him and Sam waves back. 

“What am I, chopped liver?” Josh jokes and takes off his sunglasses. 

“Exactly.” 

This is exactly why Sam likes Amy. As she gives Josh a side hug and he averts his eyes, Sam remembers exactly why he _doesn’t_ like Amy. 

“I’ve got a few more people to pick up, you think you can help hold down the fort Sammy?” 

Sam can’t decide how he feels about Amy calling him “Sammy”, a nickname he hates unless it comes in irony from CJ or Josh himself. He wonders how she picked it up, from watching Josh. He wonders if Josh ever talks about him with Amy.

Because Sam can’t say no, he says, “You bet.” 

Sam does end up tailing and trailing CJ for most of the time, sitting in a group with Toby and Ginger and others. The newspaper crew. Joey and CJ talk together, and Toby stands still as a statue next to their couch. He looks like the world’s most exhausted bouncer. 

“You seen Donna?” 

Sam realizes Toby is talking to him, and shakes his head no. He signs Donna’s name to Joey, who shrugs and goes back to talking to CJ. She’s usually either with CJ or Josh, but since Josh is now more likely to be with Amy, none of them know how to find her. They tend to stick with each other in a pack, and if anyone was missing from their headcount they need tabs on them. 

“I’ll find her?” Sam asks this to the whole group, and they nod. It’s an excuse to stretch his legs, and to get energy out, and to run into Josh. Sam knows he’s probably somewhere getting handsy with Amy drunk off one and a half beers, but a tiny part of him hopes in the search for Donna he’ll find Josh, who will suggest they spend the party together and join Sam back at their group and never talk to Amy ever again. 

Sam goes around room to room, eventually getting a drink from one of Amy’s friends, looking half for a head of long blonde hair and half for a brown short one.

This is when things go bad, because Sam opens a closed door in the basement, which one should never do at a party, and finds Josh and Many making out on the couch in a guest room. They notice him and Sam immediately forces out a startled, “Sorry!” 

It was only half a second, but now he’s seen them and his heart is beating and he wants to open and close the door a few times more because it didn’t shut just right, but that would be a terrible idea. Sam can’t get the picture out of his head. Josh kneeling over Amy with a hand up her shirt, and Amy with a leg hooked over Josh’s, and both of them kissing. 

He all but runs back upstairs, and then up again, looking for a closet or a bathroom to hide in. In a cruel and ironic miracle, he finds Donna reading a book in the bathtub in the door next.

“Oh hey Sam- Sam?”

He must look terrible. He feels terrible. And he knows Donna must not have been well either, she was hiding and reading A History Of Modern Art which was most definitely a coffee table book she’d taken up here. 

“Hey, sorry I’m. I just.” Sam tries to enter the bathroom but can’t, he can’t cross the threshold right and knows if he doesn't get this right more terrible things will happen, so he can’t breathe and keeps stepping forwards and backwards.

“Sam. It’s okay. Come here, it’s all okay.”

He gets it right a few times after that, and curls next to Donna on the other side of the bathtub. She smells like weed and perfume, and he concentrates on that. 

“What are you doing here?” Sam mumbles and Donna closes the book and places it on top of the closed toilet.

“Wallowing and pining and wishing people knew how to lock doors.” 

At this Sam stands to lock the door and Donna sniggers at him. 

“No not you, Sam. I just- this must be weird for you I guess.” 

Now he’s more confused than panicking, but he can deal with confused.

“What do you mean? I was- I came up here to get you, CJ and Joey and the crew wanted to know where you were and I was supposed to come get you but I got lost and- and things, and I don’t know why people insist of bathroom books or coffee table books, they’re the only genre of books where location matters. Textbooks, fiction books, audio books, they all note what's inside not where it’s supposed to go.” Sam knows he’s upset, he’s gushing, spewing words, and doesn’t stop until Donna puts a hand on his and grounds him.

“You’re upset about something. And I’m guessing it’s less trivial than me seeing Josh and Amy,” Donna says and Sam fails at stuffing down a chuckle. 

He shakes his head. 

“Is? Wait is that what happened to you? Why has that got you sad? You’re not high too are you?” 

“I’m not high. You’re high?”

“Sam even I know I smell like a hippie van and my eyes are probably redder than my lipstick, yeah.”

Sam nods and taps his foot on the tile.

“You didn’t answer me.”

“What?”

“Do you like Amy?” 

Sam wonders how she got to that conclusion, until he realizes he basically told her he was in pieces over seeing them and the logical end of that thought process would be that he likes Amy. It felt stupid just to say it. ‘Like.’ A ‘crush.’ Something so silly they should have left it behind in middle school, something fond and almost forgotten at the foot of a hot metal slide. 

Donna’s basically handed him an out, but Sam’s so _so_ sick of stuffing everything about him down, so he says, “Something like that.”

“I’m sorry, it’s probably weird me to talk about Josh, he’s your best friend and I don’t wanna-“

“It’s okay. I know how you feel.”

It’s no secret Donna kinda likes him, and Josh kinda likes her, and they’ve danced around each other and dated once last year, never sticking but always in each other’s orbit. Sam thought he maybe should have been more jealous of Donna, but in his head this pulled them together instead of repelling. Donna’s also got a thing for Joey, he knows because CJ accidentally told him. He tries to forget it but sometimes Sam inadvertently remembers and feels bad for it. There’s a bad joke in his head brewing about ‘J’ names. 

“Amy’s hard to hate. I know it’s textbook for me to get my claws out and dig into her, but she’s not some super-villain. She’s just a girl.”

“She really is. She knocks Josh down a peg so well I can’t even be mad at her.” 

There’s a still moment of silence before Sam realizes exactly what he’s said. Except it’s not so much realizing, Sam is always careful with his words and never speaks without proofreading, but letting time and space for the interpretation he knows will follow. Donna is looking at him with furrowed eyebrows trying to piece everything together.

“It’s Josh,” she says. Not a question, barely a full sentence. Just a simple statement. Pronoun, verb, noun. 

“It’s Josh,” Sam responds. Antecedent, verb, noun.

They sit there together in Amy’s bathroom in silence, knowing. 

“You wanna drive me home?” Donna asks, and Sam is to his feet before she can finish.

He helps her out of the bathtub and dumps his beer down the sink. It swirls around, a pooling, burnt sugar brown, and Sam turns the water on and off three times before tossing the cup in the bathroom garbage can. They walk back down the stairs together, and although Sam’s heart is still up in arms regretting and obsessing over why he’s told Donna, her silence is appreciated. 

“I’m taking Donna home,” Sam says back at the group, much to their protests. 

“Anyone else need a ride?” 

Joey raises a hand and Donna moves to help her up, but they’re both so tired it seems that they fall over each other onto the floor. It’s a funny scene, and is a perfect excuse for Sam to take them home. Donna hands Sam the keys to her car without so much as a threat, and they drive. 

By the time they’re at Donna’s house, she and Joey have fallen asleep on each other’s shoulders, and Sam realizes since he’s driving Donna’s car and has no way to get home.

“Hey Donna?” He whispers and pokes her after he parks, shakily, but parks. In any other circumstances, this would be cause for celebration. Sam was an excellent driver, but terrible at parking. 

“Hrm?” 

“Can I stay over? My house is far and Josh-“ Donna is saying yes and letting them in before Sam can settle into a rant of excessive words that would betray how anxious he still is. 

Josh was supposed to drive him, Sam thinks as he punches the couch pillow he’s sleeping on on the floor of Donna’s room. He was supposed to spend the night at Amy’s, and Josh would drive him. The thought now made him sick, waiting there for them to spend the night together and sleeping on the couch with the handful of other kids too tired or drunk to go home. Waiting on Josh. He thought he’d rather walk home from here and risk waking his parents, before he blinks and they’ve slept through the rest of the night.


	2. when your silver is my gold in this light i swear im blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys so much for the support on the first chapter! now we have: the classic illegal underage use of substances. i do not condone drugs or the devils lettuce. if you enjoy leave a kudos and/or comment!

He doesn’t mean to avoid Josh, or Donna either. Donna at least realizes what’s happening and gives him space in calculus until he gives her a pencil when she’s lost her's again, and the odd space between them is fixed. Sam thinks he should try all his apologies sponsored by Ticonderoga or Semi-Hex. Maybe if he gave Josh a Lamy and no explanation, he’d forget about how Sam ignored him for a week after the party. 

No, Sam didn’t necessarily ignore him. He ignored his calls flat out the next day and avoided him at school, and then for the week or so after _that_ he just dodged every invitation Josh threw at him to hang out. It actually sucked not getting coffee at lunch with him, so much so that Sam had taken to bringing a thermos with him. It was a game of waiting to see if Josh would tease him about it, and Sam hadn’t decided if he’d have the strength to blow him off again. 

“Rough night?” Josh bumps the side of his black backpack into Sam’s shoulder.

Sam coughs and spills coffee over the rim of the thermos. Skipping over the mental poor choice of words, Sam capped the thermos and slid it into the shelf of his locker, grabbing his Physics textbook. 

“Not terribly.” 

“I was gonna ask if you wanted to go for a run but it looks like you’re covered. You get much sleep last night?” Josh wrinkles in concern. It’s a whole-body movement like he’s a red-flanneled caterpillar. Lines appear on his forehead as he physically leaned over, as if he could scan Sam up and down like a robot and find what was wrong with him. For Sam’s own sake, he hopes Josh can only read him as far as he can throw him. 

“Some.” Sam shifts the Physics book under his arm and puts his pen in his mouth. Josh wrinkles again. 

“How much are some?” Josh takes Sam’s Physics book for him and Sam takes Josh’s notebooks and puts two inside. They are a well-oiled machine of sharing locker space.

“Four?”

Josh scoffs. 

“Minutes? Hours?” 

Sam grumbles a reply that’s not worded so much as it is tonal noises that say, _you know, just some_ , and Josh grabs the pen out of Sam’s mouth. 

Now Sam really can’t talk, because his brain’s replaying Josh’s hands so close to his face and almost on his lips like it's a VHS tape. Stop there and rewind. 

“I’m not holding this for you forever, it’s got spit all on it.”

Blinking a little too much, Sam takes his pen back and slips it in his pocket. 

“Something’s up and you’re not telling me,” Josh closes Sam’s locker and twists the lock. 

“You think you’re being noble but it’s just annoying. Let's get lunch.” Josh holds his hand out. 

For one white-hot second Sam wants to grab Josh’s hand with his own, he almost thinks that’s what’s happening. But then he realizes he’s holding Josh’s world history notebook, which is the one he still needs, and Josh is trying to stage an exchange.

Rewind, rewind, rewind. 

The tape in his head clicks as Sam hands Josh his notebook. Josh then gives him his textbook, and before Sam realizes he never said yes, Josh is leading them to his car. 

“You gonna crash us this time?”

Josh throws his notebook in the back seat, literally throws it like he's throwing a pitch, and Sam bites down a smile. He thinks of how the spiral spine is bent and can’t find it in him to be snarky about it. 

“Depends. Get in and find out.”

Sam sits shotgun, knowing how hard to pull the seatbelt so it goes just right and he doesn’t have to re-do it a million times on the road. 

"Try hard not to kill us this time."

"No promises," Josh says. 

They get french fries from a nearby burger joint. Josh takes all of Sam's ketchup and puts it in layers on his fries until they look like a gross soggy mess. Sam misses In and Out, and Josh expresses his hatred for any place on earth that isn't the east coast. They’re back, and Sam feels a little bad for making things odd for a bit. He can fool himself into thinking emotionally-stunted Josh didn’t even notice how aloof he was acting until Josh throws their trash away and doesn’t get out of the car when they park back at school. They only have a few minutes until class, and Sam worms at his watch hoping Josh will, in an unprecedented move, pay mind to the time. 

“What was up this week? You’ve been acting all. . .” Josh throws his hands up in the air and those premature wrinkles press into an appearance on his forehead. 

“You’ve been gone.”

Sam picks at the edge of his Physics textbook and tries to count his breaths. 

“I had an argument with my dad regarding the state of my academics.” Sam picks and choses the most clinical of words as puts on his serious face. In the beats between speaking he concentrates on the little atoms on his textbook cover and not on Josh’s brown eyes. 

Josh snorts and Sam holds his breath until he can feel Josh start to believe him.

“Seriously man? What, you get an 89 on the physics text?”

“Well,” Sam cocks his head, “Eighty-eight but that’s neither here nor there. I’m back in the game.” 

"He should get off your ass."

"He's my dad," Sam defends. "He means well."

"You're the most hardworking person I know, next to Donna." Josh pauses. "Don't tell her I said that."

Sam barks a laugh.

"Ten-four."

"Seriously though, you're alright?" Josh leans towards him and rests an arm on the top of his seat. The sleeves of his flannel are sloppily rolled just to his elbows. 

"Yeah," Sam swallows and bits the inside of his cheek absently, "I'm alright." 

Sam meets Josh’s eyes, and now it’s his turn to scan him like a fingerprint and keep the copy as another memory of Josh to pin-up in his brain. If he could see the inside of his head, there’d probably be a serial-killer style photo wall with pictures of Josh there, all connected with string detailing his favorite things and how to push his buttons. If he saw himself, Sam would call it crazy. He does already. 

“I can’t have you off your game in Mock Congress this Friday.” Josh pulls his hiding half-smile, where he’s trying to be serious but can’t. Sam is staring right at the corner of his mouth being pulled up and his lips pressing together ever so slightly. 

“How would you ever get that Veteran’s bill passed if not for Senator Seaborn of Washington?”

“I’m Texas, Sammy, we’d find a way.”

Sam feels his stomach tighten as he laughs and finally breaks Josh’s stare. 

“Thanks.” Sam pretends to look at his textbook again. 

Josh smiles again as he unlocks the car. 

“Don’t mention it.” 

\------------------------------------------------------

“It’s on our bucket list! We have to.” 

Sam nudges Josh’s shoulder as they sit on Josh’s couch in the basement. 

“But like, only if you really want to. If you don’t want to and you’re holding back because you don’t want to we don’t have to,” Sam continues.

“On the other hand if you want to but are reflexively saying no then I’m saying no. To you saying no, that is.” 

Josh groans and rubs his eyes. Sam uses the half-second to take in Josh’s crumbled grey atari t-shirt and the way it shapes over his shoulders.

"i'm pushing you to do it if you want to, but if you seriously don't want to speak now, or forever hold your peace."

“I would if you'd let me get a word in there.” Josh rubs his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Right.” 

After a second of silence, Sam focuses on the table while picking at the skin around his nails. He hopes he doesn't have to use hand sanitizer anytime soon.

“I just wanna make sure-”

“Sam.”

Josh stares at Sam and at Sam's hands. He reaches and puts a calm hand over Sam’s restless ones. Warm and heavier than Sam had expected, and with the same rough spot on the side of his fingers that Sam had from frequent writing and note-taking.

“What’s the verdict?” Sam tries not to move his hands too much, wanting them to stay frozen and suspended like a puppet’s. 

Josh still takes his hand off Sam’s as he’s stopped fidgeting at the already raw spots on his skin. It’d been a stressful week. 

Josh shrugs and then nods. 

This big thing they’d been debating and mulling over for the past half hour amounted to a thin rolled paper the length of Sam’s palm sitting surreptitiously and patiently on the coffee table. 

Sam got the weed and papers from a cousin that stopped by one day for her fall break visit from the University of Denver. Last summer he’d joked about buying weed from her, and a week before her visit in town she seriously asked him. On impulse over the landline, Sam had said yes. He’d proceeded to make a grilled cheese four times over trying to calm down. His dad had been really pissed about that. Sam had said that he should be glad his stress outlet wasn't cocaine or shoplifting, and making grilled cheese over and over to get it right wasn't the worst thing he could do. Laurie said he was a hoot and did not object to eating said grilled cheese sandwiches. 

“Do you know how to?” Sam asks. Over their years at high school together, Sam and Josh had made a long and ever-changing list of things they wanted to do. Get drunk, stay up for two days straight, get a girlfriend, go on a road trip. Smoke for real, together, not just a single hit at a party where they were too worried about facing their parents the same night to do much. 

“I’ve seen people do it before. It’s not rocket science. Right?”

Sam shrugged.

“We could call Donna, she knows what she’s doing,” Josh says.

“Dude.” Sam gave Josh a look.

“We can’t ask Donna, that’s like calling IT support.”

Josh scoffed and rubbed his face again. He kept staring down the joint on the table instead of Sam like it would become animated and fight him. 

“You mean you _don’t_ call IT support?”

“No of course I don’t call IT support,” Sam says. “I’m taking Engineering, I can fix my own damn telephone.”

“You’re failing physics.”

“I have a ninety-four in physics, what does physics have to do with-”

Josh groans again and stared at the ceiling. Sam is reminded of an activity they did in Art class last year; looking away from the page and drawing blind, connecting your eye and your pencil. Seeing every shape and line instead of just looking at what you expect the thing to me. Pretending the pencil is your finger and you’re just feeling.

Sam follows the line of Josh’s jaw, over his chin and down his neck. Up the smoothness of his adam's apple and around the edge of his t-shirt. He traces the outline, an invisible picture on the knee of his jeans. 

“Let's get it over with.” Sam nods, sharp. 

Josh laughs. “Get it over with’? You wanna, lie back and think of England?” 

That puts a picture in Sam’s head that he doesn’t want to be there, just in case Josh has developed mind-reading superpowers in the last five minutes. 

“Get the lighter mister IT support.” 

Josh does. It’s green plastic, and it takes him a few tries to get the flame up. Sam’s allowed to stare at his hands as Josh does this. 

The smoke is thick and strong-smelling, and Josh hurries to open the windows and as Sam takes a hit. 

He doesn’t really know how to do this, so he holds his breath until he can’t anymore and is surprised to see the smoke coming out of his mouth as he breathes out. He’s not surprised at the coughing fit that follows. 

“Shit, what do we do about the smell?” Josh asks as Sam tries to catch his breath. 

“Light candles. Use air freshener.” Sam leans in to take another hit. “Get some incense...”

Josh stares at him with this little smirk, like he almost doesn’t believe him.

“Incense.”

“Yeah.”

“From what. . . the mall?”

Sam shrugs. “That’s where you buy things.”

Josh breathes in the smoke sends himself into a series of coughs. 

“You didn’t wanna mention this sooner?”

“I thought you knew the basic principles of how marijuana worked.” 

They sit there for minutes that fall warmer and heavier on their shoulders than they usually do. Neither of them is used to this, but it’s less something Sam wants to hide from and more something he can lean against. 

He actually feels. . . pretty fine. His brain’s slowed down, all the overworked and over greased cogs stopped in the haze of smoke. Running his hands up and down his jeans, Sam presses his palms to the seat of the couch. It’s soft, springy, and he’s not even worried about how dirty it might be or if his shoes are tied the right way. It feels a bit like the moments before going to sleep, mostly here but a little somewhere else. 

“I thought it wouldn’t work,” Josh mumbles. He passes the joint to Sam and Sam leans a little too far forward to accept it. Their hands bump and navigate around each other. 

“Is it working?”

Josh squints at Sam and starts silently laughing, doubling over and freezing with a smile on his face.

“Yeah, look around I think it’s working Sam. You look like you’re sleeping.” 

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s working, trust me.”

Sam frowns sets the join down on the little orange-rimmed plate Josh has brought down. It’s odd to be here in Josh’s basement, where they’ve spent so many nights sleeping and playing video games and doing homework, doing something that so clashes with the usual innocently boyish image. Sam wonders if this will be a new kind of place, like back in California when he crashed his bike on the corner. He’d walked and ridden past that place every day for years, but after the crash that left a scar on his forehead, it was a source of dread and he held his breath every time he passed it.

“We should get fans for the-” Sam waved a hand in the air to the little lines of smoke and the smell of the weed still sticking in the air. 

Josh nods, and when they get up Sam has to take another minute laughing because they really must look stupid. Josh is frowning and looks confused about everything, and Sam doesn’t know how he looks but his whole body feels heavy and warmed and floating just a bit. It's like a sort of soft blanket around him. Sam wraps his arms around himself, and it makes Josh laugh. 

“Where’s the outlet?”

“Josh it’s literally right in front of you.”

“What? No the one for this, we’re using that for the fan.”

“We are plugging in the fan right now.”

“Oh.” 

Josh jams the plug into the outlet and the fan turns on. It doesn’t do much, so they sit under the window and blow the smoke out of the screen. 

“What are you _doing_?” Josh asks. 

Sam’s fallen backward and is lying on the floor, his arms spread out just a little bit, and his knees still up. It’s like he’s taken a picture of himself in the middle of making a snow-angel. The thought makes him sad. 

“I’m lying down. I’m thinking about snow.”

“I’m thinking about how my parents are gonna kill me when they come back tomorrow.” Josh moves next to Sam and is lying down on the floor too, their hands almost touching, their shoulders pressed together, and their faces a few inches away from each other. 

This was probably not a good thing. Well, it was a nice thing. It was a nice thing for Sam to keep in his brain, to live right on the line he walked with Josh. This was a not-good thing because Sam was warm and fuzzy and everything had the volume turned up. 

“They’re not gonna kill you. You’re a golden child, just air this place out.” 

Right now, Josh’s shoulder pressed against his felt like something was burning, like Sam needed to sit up and check if he still had his sweater on. 

Sam turns to look at Josh like this, a close up from the side. Sam wants to reach out and trace the angles of his face, the shape of his nose, the curve of his neck. He wants to do this with his lips, preferably. 

“What are you thinking about?” Sam asks, just to throw the words into space and see what sticks. 

Josh snorts in laughter before turning to face Sam too. Sam's blood is thinning. 

“England. You?”

Sam’s thinking about the color of Josh’s eyes, and how fluffy and soft his hair looks. Sam’s thinking about what’s under Josh’s t-shirt. Sam’s thinking about how he’s a little bit in love with Josh. And how that's not good, not good at all. 

“San Fransisco,” he says. It’s not a lie because he did start thinking about San Fransisco, he said it so it must have been in his head. But all Sam can see and breathe is brown eyes. 

Sam’s gonna kiss him. He can’t not. He knows he shouldn’t, he knows if not for the weed in his system he would be a nervous wreck. He knows Josh is talking about something and his voice has gone all soft, and Sam is going to kiss him. 

He presses his lips to Josh’s, closing the space behind them, clumsy. They slip and press against each other like so many stumbling bumblebees, tripping and colliding. 

There’s pressure against Sam’s lips, and he realizes it’s Josh pressing forward and leaning into him. 

Sam doesn't know how to do this, so he thinks of all the movies and books he has read and hopes for the best when he brushes his tongue against Josh's bottom lip. Josh starts breathing quicker, one of his hands grabbing Sam’s shirt in a fist on his shoulder. Sam glides a hand to the side of Josh's neck, his fingertips nestled in the line of Josh's hair. It's thick and soft, and his skin is just this side of sweaty. 

They’re slotted together like pieces of silverware, Sam holds his breath when he slips a tremulous hand under Josh’s shirt and moves to wrap a leg around his waist- 

“Stop!” 

As quick as it started it ends, with Josh taking his hands away from Sam’s shoulders and showing him off. 

“Josh-”

“I said stop it. Jesus, I-” Josh snaps upward like a mousetrap and pushes away from Sam, scooting backward until there are a few chasmic feet between them.

“I’m not gay.”

Sam feels something harden over in his ribcage. 

“But-”

“I’m not fucking _gay_ , Sam.” Josh throws it at him like it’s a mud-covered baseball. The way he says the word- _gay_ \- makes it all bigger and more tangible. Josh says it in half a whisper and half a spit like it makes him nauseous just to shape the word in his mouth. 

Sam wants to throw something back at him. 

“Really?” he snorts. There are a hundred things he could have said to back that. Not five seconds ago Josh was kissing him, quite without reservation. And Sam is actively trying not to look at Josh’s pants right now. 

“ _Fuck_ , you think you can just kiss me once and turn me gay! I’m not _gay_.”

“Say it again, it’ll sound less like an excuse.” Sam knows he should stop talking, he's picking at Josh’s carpet and feeling like he's breathing helium instead of air. 

“Get out.” 

“What?”

“Fucking _l_ _eave_ Sam, go home, get out of my house.” Josh says it like Sam’s a spirit he has to exorcise. He says it like Sam hasn’t been here a million times, and not once has Josh seriously pulled the “this is my house” card. Like Sam doesn’t know these faded walls as well as his own. 

Sam blinks and then stands up. His legs are shaky from kissing and from lying down so long. 

It takes him what feels like years to get his shoes back on, pack up his stuff, and to finally get to the front door. The backpack on his shoulder is a stinging reminder that they were supposed to spend the weekend together. Sam doesn’t know how he can go home and tell his parents they had another fight. They already think of Josh as too bright, too grating, too much a hothead and too little a mediator. Sam's always known they were right, but it's never mattered like this until now. 

“Josh?”

There’s no answer. Sam looks down the steps to the basement and after a minute of contemplating, calls out again.

“Josh?”

No answer. Sam can hear his blood rushing in his ears like the sea. There's a dropping feeling in his gut that he can't spit out, a thing that tastes dry and smoky in his mouth. 

“I’m leaving.”

That gets a response.

“Yeah.” 

Sam coils and uncoils his hands into fists, there’s nowhere he can put them to make them steady. 

He slams the basement door and then Josh’s front door, not bothering to lock up. And then, because he’s Sam, he does open it again and turn the lock inside. Then he forgets if he really locked it or not and moves to do it again before he hears a second click from behind the door.

Sam feels like he’s gonna cry, and he can’t cry, not here on Josh’s front door when Josh is just behind the window. 

He walks the long way home, grateful this time for the distraction and the time. The trees are finally changing, a bit early this year. Sam picks up leaves on the street, for what he doesn’t know, but he can’t stop himself. The trees arch over the sidewalk and provide spots of shade. Across all the front lawns are thin scatters of color on the green. One in every few houses have collected the leaves into neat piles. 

“I hate you,” Sam says out loud and half an hour too late. He picks a dried leaf off the sidewalk and twirls it in his fingers. It's a yellow maple, and as it spins Sam blinks moisture out of his eyes. It’s too cold to cry, so he shuts it off. 

Sam wishes he could just collapse on his bed, but he had to go through the whole routine of washing his hands, taking off his shoes, putting away everything from his backpack twice until his feet hurt. 

He’s vaguely aware that he’s hungry and thirsty, but mostly just tired. 

Falling back on his bed, Sam crushes his palms into his eyes to keep the few tears from falling out. He’s almost successful until he thinks he wishes he could talk to Josh about feeling so emptied when he remembers this is Josh’s fault. The one person he can think of, the only person he wants to patch him back up again is also the last person who could help. It’s still Josh. Always _always_ Josh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i promise it gets better


	3. another's arms and this's just torture to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a crazy and rough few days on my end, and editing this kept me sane through it all so here she is! really appreciating all the kudos and comments, so if you liked this at all even the shortest of note would honestly make my day after the shit show that is my life :-) without further ado, chapter three! whooooa we're halfway there!

It’s once again more than a week before Sam even talks to Josh again. This time Josh doesn’t seem to want to fix him, he wants to get out of the way before Sam explodes. Josh looks at him in Gov like he wants something from him and is terrified at the same time. Sam wants to find him after class and say, “For God’s sake talk to me, I’m not gonna kiss you in front of Mr.McGarry.” 

But he doesn’t say anything. They speak in one-worded exchanges, and when Donna tells him he and Amy have fallen off Sam knows he should comfort him, but all he can feel is a sick satisfaction. It makes him want to scrub the dirt out from under his fingernails.

“CJ’s having the homecoming after-party tomorrow. You gonna show?” Donna asks. It’s Donna now standing by his locker with him, even though Josh still puts his things there. They exchange wordlessly and no longer get coffee together. The lack of words hurts Sam more than the caffeine headaches and loss of a ride. 

“I don’t know. I’ve got a lot of work.”

“You always have a lot of work.”

“Exactly.” 

Donna groans and gets  _ Moby Dick _ out of her backpack. 

“You already wrote the essay I assume?” 

“You want a copy?” 

“See I get why CJ calls you Sunshine now.” 

This makes Sam laugh and he wonders once more why he didn’t get closer to Donna before. Although, of course, the answer was the tension between her and Josh, though now that she’s in the Sam’s Secret Love Club all of that’s seemed to float away. 

“It would give you a good chance to talk to him,” Donna says. “Kiss and make up, jello shots included.” 

Sam frowns at her word choice and decides, fuck it, and leaves his Physics book in his locker. He was never going to get above a ninety-five in that class, and he was destined for another A-minus on the midterms. 

“I’ll go but I don’t wanna talk to him.”

“You ever gonna tell me what’s going on between you two? Why Josh is throwing a hissy fit again, I assume?” 

They walk down the hall, shoulder’s bumping.

“Like you say. Josh being Josh, having a hissy fit.” 

“Does it,” Donna lowers her voice a bit, “Have anything to do with. . . you know?”

The old reliable “you know”. Sam’s grateful she didn’t say ‘Anything to do with your being gay and having a schoolgirl crush on him’ but the ‘you know’ with the raised eyebrows and pressed lips was getting old. 

“Nah,” Sam lies, and because Donna is Donna and not Josh, she accepts it. 

“You gonna talk to him at the game?” 

“If we win I’ll talk to him.” 

That’s a good enough bet. Their team was mediocre most times, above-average enough for a pep rally at the best of times. If they pulled through, Sam will take it as a sign that he’s got to do something about this rift between Josh and him. Maybe he’ll start with, ‘I’m sorry I kissed you and I’m sorry you liked it so much.’

Or maybe, ‘I’m not sorry I kissed you, and I think you are a little gay. Straight guys don’t get a hard-on kissing their best friend.’ Or, ‘When are you gonna come out and apologize, I’ll take either’. 

What he actually says, when the seconds run out and the bleachers erupt in cheers, is just a “Would you have put money on that?”

Josh looks too happy to care it’s Sam that’s talking to him, because he smiles and wraps an arm around him and says, “Absolutely not.”

Within a second Josh realizes what’s happening and lets go of Sam, and they both shift away from each other. Where there used to be easy overlap, they both leave a foot of space for interpretation to fall and die. 

“You goin’ to CJs?” Sam asks, and Josh nods with his hands in his pockets looking down.

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Josh replies. 

There’s everything and nothing to talk about. Sam won last weekend’s debate. His house is free on Sunday if they wanted to hang out. He misses getting coffee with Josh. He’s still got all of Josh’s favorite orders on his notebook as if he hasn’t memorized them already. 

All things that would pass easy and normally between them, if not for the chasm of space. 

“I’ll see you there then?”

And all Sam can say, is:

“Yeah.” 

\------------------------------------------------------

CJ’s house is smaller than Amy’s, which is the last time Sam’s gone to a real party. There are fewer people, but more he doesn’t know. Maybe they’re CJ’s friends from the other school. 

He doesn’t care, because CJ pours lemonade and vodka in a red cup for him, mostly lemonade, and this time he sticks to Donna and Toby. 

“-Wouldn't have bet on it if my life was at stake, are you kidding me?” Toby is messing with the buttons on his jacket and sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“They won tonight, lay off,” Sam says. 

“For the first time.” 

Toby reminds him of Josh, which is something he never thought would happen. He can remember Josh ranting about the football team in a government meeting so heated they had to convince Dr. Barlet not to give the minutes to the team and watch the school burn. 

“Our football team is a bunch of cream-filled putzes with a 2.0 average between them,” Josh had said, waving his arms and rubbing his forehead, looking a decade older than he was.

“And they take up most of our funding! I walked in the building this morning and there’s a fucking leak in the ceiling, but sure let's give Coach Taylor a raise and hand the boys some more Gatorade!” 

Sam laughs into his cup thinking about it, pretending to live in that room and not here in CJ’s kitchen where Josh is somewhere else getting drinks but still not talking to him. 

“We’ll get some announcement on Monday and everyone will forget they hate each other for a minute, isn’t that a good thing?” Donna says. She’s leaning against Sam’s side, her legs tucked under her and her hair in a ponytail. 

“It’s just a distraction. There are issues here that no one has the decency to care about so far as they can talk about them!” Toby exclaims. He’s dangerously close to launching into a full-fledged rant about the politics of their high school when Josh walks in and Sam sits up a little straighter. 

“When they said to get involved in local politics I’m not sure they meant this local.”

“You’re an elitist and I’m not talking to you about this,” Toby says and Josh grins at him. 

“Who’s the elitist now?”

“Still, decisively, you.” Donna chimes in. Josh rolls his eyes at her and doesn’t even look at Sam. They’re practically sitting on top of each other, Josh is making a point not to look Sam in the eyes.

Donna turns to Sam, so close he can count her eyelashes. She smells like perfume and girl’s shampoo, so like seven different fruits he’s never heard of.

“Is he mad at you?” She whispers. Sam just nods and notices how close their lips are, and how everyone is his peripheral vision is definitely watching them just a little bit.

“Is it because of me?” She pulls an over-exaggerated frown.

This makes Sam smile.

“Not everything is about you Donatella.”

“Yeah, but it should be.”

Sam stifles a laugh and turns away from her, looking at the dark tile of the kitchen. The cabinet is hard against his back, but he doesn’t want to move. If he moves there’s an itching sensation in his brain that it will disrupt everything around him like a falling Jenga tower. 

“Hey lovebirds, you wanna weigh in?” Toby says, and it takes Sam a minute to realize he’s talking to him and Donna. They look at each other again for half a second, the gears turning in their heads. Sam, who’s gay as a three dollar bill. Donna, who kind of into Josh but also really into Joey, and who’d never in a million years  _ like _ like Sam.

They burst into laughter, doubling over and grabbing onto each other like Toby’s just said the funniest thing in the world, which he almost has. Sam lifts up his cup, careful not to spill his drink. Donna on the other hand sends her rum and coke half on the floor and half on their pants. 

This just sends them all into a slow cascade of laughter, an avalanche as the drink threatens to stain and they all get up for paper towels. Sam almost doesn’t notice when Josh leaves the room and doesn’t come back. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry what were you talking about?” Donna says. She’s wiped the drink off her legs and gets back from throwing away the paper towels. CJ is still giggling on the floor in the doorway to the kitchen. 

“Something about- God I don’t know anymore Josh,” Toby said and looked around.

“Where’s Josh?”

“Getting paper towels or something-” CJ broke into another fit of laughter. 

“You’re a real comedian Toby.” Donna nodded to him and Toby put a hand on his heart and offered half a smile in thanks. Sam realizes he’s almost never seen Toby laughing like they all were. Maybe he was just meant to be this, stoic and serious and angry about moral high grounds. Toby regularly looked like he was waiting to grow. Not height necessarily, but just to grow up. Everything about him was a slight contradiction. The young face and the almost-full beard, the energy of a kid but the weariness of a middle-aged man that had seen the worst of the world. 

“You deserve a laugh at that, that was funny,” Sam says. 

“Do I look like the laughing drunk to you, Sam?”

“You’re drunk?”

“You’ve never seen me drunk.”

“Bullshit,” CJ says and raises her eyebrows at him. Something passes between them and CJ starts laughing again. It spreads to Donna too, who’s laying with her head on Sam’s outstretched legs. She looks like a cat about to curl up and take a nap. 

Toby smiles, looking at the space between the CJ and the door. Sam guesses there’s something there between them, whatever tension and the unspoken language they had had to amount to something. If not romance then just something else, some odd bond that lived in the middle between friends and not-friends. 

“Sam?” CJ says and looks at him, suddenly serious. 

“Are you and Josh okay?” 

There’s another layer to that question that only CJ and Donna know, and Sam can feel them waiting for an answer, waiting to read between whatever he tells them to find out how bad off he is. 

“Josh is being Josh,” he says and drains his cup. He sets it on the ground and CJ frowns.

“Are you sure?”

“Since when do you care so much about his. . .” Sam searches. “His hissy fits?” 

Donna laughs from her space on the floor in front of him.

“When they’re affecting our top man. When they’re affecting my  _ friend _ ,” CJ adds. It softens Sam’s heart. He’s not just a grade, he’s not the smart kid standing for everything people have a stake in. He’s CJ’s friend. 

“Thanks,” He says and taps Donna’s shoulder to get up. 

“Anyone else want another drink?” 

Donna raises her cup but CJ leans forward and takes it from her.

“One strike and you’re out, I am too tipsy to be cleaning.”

Sam goes out on his own to the table of alcohol in CJ’s living room. There’s a half-finished liter of sprite and a quarter-finished bottle of vodka, but against his own wishes Sam picks a can of beer out from under the table. 

The sprite would be easier and taste better, but the same voice in Sam’s brain that was always present told him if he drank the soda it would be full of germs that'd paralyze him or brain wrecking amoebas. It didn’t make enough sense to act on it but resulted in Sam staring down the beer in his hands and the sprite on the table until he ripped himself away from both. He’d already had a lot to drink, he could do without more in his system.

Away from the comforting corner of CJ and Toby and Donna, Sam wanders in between people. He really tried to get his brain under control, to not work up the same feelings of fear that churned in his head and made his hands shake. 

Without the distraction of Donna holding him together, Sam needs to run away. He’s halfway to the front door before he realized all his stuff was still in the kitchen. But he didn’t want to go back there either. The three of them could probably see the sudden spout of anxiety growing in strength in his chest. Like a little dark monster under the bed, Sam’s heart started crawling and clawing at his ribs. 

Sam needed to just sit somewhere quiet until the feeling passed. There was the advice the school counselor told him, the single time Sam entered her office in a wreck of tears almost a year ago.

Just let it come, she said. Let the fear happen, let it pass, and don’t fear the fear itself. 

Sam realizes she stole half of that motivational speech from Roosevelt and Frank Herbert. Still, sound advice. He’d find an unoccupied room or bathroom and sit against the wall until he could breathe right. Wash his hands a few times, splash water on his face, and pretend he was talking to someone else. 

Sam climbs CJ’s stairs, paying attention to the cool feel of the wood railings and the spring of the carpet under his socks. There are seventeen steps in total. 

There’s music coming out of a bedroom. To the far right is CJ’s room, which he knows both because he’d been in there before and because it was closed and with a sign over it that said: “Don’t enter; locked”. Somewhere here is the bathroom. One door is locked with the light on, and Sam leaves trying not to think about what’s going on in there. The last one is unlocked, barely closed, with no light peeking out. 

He takes a deep breath, prepping himself. He’s gonna open this door once, strong, and try and hide away from this feeling. No more concern from CJ and Donna, no more frowns from Toby, no more anything from Josh.

Sam opens the door with clammy hands, and if he didn’t already feel like throwing up, he was gonna now. He really wishes he’d stop having a curse of fate to open up doors where Josh is making out with someone.

But it’s not Amy this time; it’s worse.

His name is Matthew or Matt, Sam thinks. He’s seen him in passing before, and he is a friend of a friend of CJ’s. He’s taller than Sam by a bit, light brown hair. 

This matters, because Josh is sitting on the sink with his legs wrapped around Matt’s waist and they’re kissing. Josh is grabbing at Matt’s back and making little high-breathed whines that in any other case would have made Sam’s face go red. Instead, it  _ really _ makes him want to throw up. 

“ _ Fuck _ .” Joshes uncrosses his legs around Matt and pushes him away.

There’s a second of silence before Sam slams the door closed again. He can’t let go of the handle. He can’t breathe. He’s going light-headed but he can’t breathe. 

The handle jiggles and Sam lets go. It’s Matt, closing the door behind him.

“You guys are friends, right? I’ve seen you around.”

Matt sounds like he’s just run into Sam normally like Sam didn’t just have his world shattered a second time because Josh upon everything else is a dirty fucking liar. 

Sam swallows, nods, and looks at the floor.

“He’s a little. . . sensitive about this I guess. I don’t know, he just asked me if I wanted to hook up but clearly, he's. . .” Matt is stumbling, rubbing the back of his head. It’s just another blow to Sam, and that thing in him snaps.

“Just get the fuck away from me and let me talk to him.” 

Matt looks like he wants to say more and probably would have if Sam didn’t shoulder him out of the way and barge into the bathroom.

“‘Turn me gay’’, I think, is what you said,” Sam says, locking the door behind him.

Josh is sitting in the bathtub, his knees to his chest.

“Get out,” he says. Sam tries hard not to boil over.

“When are you gonna stop telling me to fuck off and talk to me.”

“I’m not gay. I’m not like you.” 

Sam knows Josh meant it to hurt, and it does.

“I don’t care if you are or not. Why are you being a bitch to me about it? Why are you lying?” 

“Why do you care?” Josh mumbles with his head resting on his knees. 

“You’re not okay and you’re being an asshole about it.” 

“Just because I don’t want to fuck you. I’m not gay. I’m  _ fine _ .” 

Sam groans and rubs his eyes as Josh uncurls and sits up. His face is set like stone, a steady frown etched into place.

“I don’t care about that anymore,” Sam lies.

“Josh, just  _ talk to me _ . I need you to talk to me again.” His voice breaks on the last word, and Sam grips the sink a little harder. He wipes his eyes with the back of his other hand and turns on the light.

“Why?” Josh spits. His eyes are red in the light, and Sam can see a purple spot on his neck. 

“Because I’m your friend!” Sam hisses. 

“No you’re not,” Josh whispers. 

Sam waits.

Sam realizes what’s happening, what he’d always been so afraid of, it’s happening here and Josh is doing it, and it hurts even more because Josh won’t just  _ talk _ to him. It hurts because Josh is lying, Josh is a liar, Josh has his own bullshit to work out, and instead of doing anything, he’s going to destroy them.

“I mean-”

“I know what you meant.”

“No, no I-”

“ _ Don’t _ ,” Sam says. He can’t control the slow roll of tears now. He looks pathetic and he knows it. 

Don’t make excuses. Don’t try and make it softer, because Sam needs to feel this hurt instead of the constant hollow. He pinches the side of his wrist just to remind himself that it's there, like a desperate attempt to wake up from a nightmare. 

Josh is a liar. Josh is aiming to hurt him at this point. Josh just didn’t  _ want _ Sam like that and instead of telling him, he crushes Sam under his shoe like a cigarette butt. 

Sam turns on the water and awkwardly splashes the redness off his face until he’s sure CJ won’t know what’s wrong.

Sam turns the light back off, then on and off again, and this time Josh doesn’t make a joke about it. He won’t ever again, probably. 

He wants to say goodbye, say something. Once again everything raging in his brain doesn’t want to be made into words. The hope of apology and sadness and homesickness for their wilting friendship, all this whirlwind amounts to silence. Sam shuts the door. 


	4. so bright just before they lose it all

Sam’s beginning to reflect on how every major event in his recent life, or rather every event concerning Josh, ends in a fight and time without speaking. Except for this time, Sam doesn’t think it’s going away. It’s been a month since CJ’s party, Thanksgiving is coming up, and he and Josh haven’t spoken outside of the classroom. Even in Mock Congress, they interact less. Mr. McGarry held Josh back at the end of one class period and Sam was almost sure he asked about the rift between them.

He even took all of his stuff out of Sam’s locker. It felt much emptier without Josh’s extra textbooks, notes, and even his trash. 

It’s unbearable. It’s like they’ve broken up and Sam has to pick up the wreckage of their friendship, and he can’t even talk to anyone about what happened.

Is this how Josh feels, he wonders while absentmindedly taking notes in English, when he pushes every thought or emotion that could result in introspection and a serious conversation into a corner of his brain and buries it? 

CJ knows something’s up with them, of course, she does, but so far Sam’s made sure she’s chalked it up to Josh problems and an extra layer of complexity on Sam’s end. Still, Sam knows things are off. They’ve not connected anymore, meaning their intersecting friend groups dance around them, walking on eggshells and drawing out maps of how to pretend like this didn’t happen while still making sure Sam and Josh never have to hang out with each other. 

Unlike a real breakup, none of their friends have tried to take sides. Other than, of course, what’s been already established. Sam’s always been closer to CJ and Toby, and Josh is still closer to Donna. Will is constantly playing the both of them, like the splintered ends of whatever tethered them are nothing more than jumping-off points. Sam is grateful for the way he not only pretends like nothing is wrong but sometimes actually seems to believe it. If nothing else, Will Bailey’s endearingly constant and dry sarcastic commentary would bring them back together.

See, that’s the problem.

Sam is still holding onto a ‘back together’. He’s still hoping for an end to this, a wake-up from the nightmare, and an eventual finish line where he and Josh shake hands and cut the ribbon together. That voice in his head tears him down every time he imagines it.

Josh has known these people and been close to them for longer than Sam’s lived in this state. Sam’s always orbited around Josh, not for lack of other friends but because that’s the way it was. Sam had plenty of people to fall back on, friends to call, people to study with. He was shooting for valedictorian and had a debate trophy with his name on the bottom. He wasn’t alone.

But nobody was Josh. 

Sam sits with Will at a circular lunch table and scribbles notes on his MUN packet when he realizes how pathetic that sounds. At this point, his stupid crush on Josh was secondary. 

Alright, no it wasn’t. That was also a lie, but did it matter, on principle?

Another voice in his head that sounded exactly like Toby said, “In what world, does it _not_?” 

So it wasn’t secondary. So it was front and center, right along with Josh calling him gay like it was a curse and stomping on their friendship in front of him. They were all equally important, and with each day Sam replaced a bit of that empty sad feeling with something harder. 

“You alright there Sam?” 

Will snaps him out of his daze and Sam realizes he’s been drawing black circles in the margins of his notes, so fast and furiously that they’ve bled through the page.

“Yeah I’m just. . . a little out of it.” Sam frowns at the paper and continues drawing the circles, but less angry and more focused on getting it right. 

“Something terribly bothersome about the-” Will lifts up the paper to skim it- “fake water crisis in Honduras?”

“There _is_ a water crisis in Honduras.”

“And you’re gonna solve it by going zodiac killer on your papers?” 

“Actually Will, these are just circles.” Sam puts on his best patronizing mom's voice. Will grumbles something that Sam doesn’t have the heart to follow.

“Hello, is Sam in there or do I need to call a medic?”

Will knocks on the table in front of him and Sam rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, a bad habit he picked up from Josh. 

“Really, not trying to think of that right now,” he mumbles.

“I didn’t know the question was of such high caliber stress.”

“What?” Sam asks.

“I asked what you’re doing for Thanksgiving, Sam.” Will pushes his glasses up to give Sam an up-and-down once over.

“I’m- I’m sorry I’m all over the place.”

“No kidding,” Will says.

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving, William?” Sam asks this like he expects it to stump him, which it does not.

“Grandma’s house and football, see how easy that is when you’re in the land of the living?”

Sam grabs the other half of his sandwich and bites off the edge of its crust. It’s another stress-fueled grilled cheese, unfortunately, wrapped in tinfoil and crushed into his backpack at the last minute.

“Not flying out to Cali this year, my parents and I are and putting up the Christmas tree.”

“Isn’t it a little early for that?” 

“You asked!” Sam takes another bite of his sandwich, wishing for something that wasn’t a day old and crumbling. He wishes for coffee and the purple air freshener in Josh’s car. 

“Trying to stretch out the holiday cheer?”

“Will!” Sam gives up on the sandwich and crumbles it all up. 

“I’m just asking questions, Sam, you look like shit and I’m asking questions.” 

“Thank’s for that, _again_.” 

“Really,” Will closes his book and starts packing up his stuff. A glance at his watch tells Sam they’ll have to get to class soon. The hour’s gone by both slower and faster than he could have imagined. 

“It’s a stressful season what with midterms and testing, and you’re walking a thin line already. Just, put the report down and take a nap,” Will finishes.

“Why does everyone have such an easy time telling how shit I look? I’m working, we’re all working, it’s fine.” Sam slides his books into his bags and looks for the nearest trash can as they all stand from the table.

“Cause you look like shit.”

“One day Will I’m gonna-”

“Happy Thanksgiving Samuel.” Will nods at him as they split in the hallway, and just like that Sam’s alone again. 

\------------------------------------------------------

Sam hangs a little blue ceramic wave on the Christmas tree, breathing in its fresh smell. He takes a needle from the carpet and rubs it between his fingers. 

“Did you know coniferous trees, gymnosperms, were some of the first real trees to evolve?” Sam says aloud. He knows he says this every year, but his parents put up with the constant factoid machine he is. Or maybe they really forget.

“Before then the trees were all plastic?” Sam’s dad elbows him. 

“Over three hundred million years of evolution, and you’re carrying our popcorn strings.” Sam taps the tree’s needles and adjusts the strings. It’s times like this he wishes he had a brother or a sister. He has a lot of cousins back in California, meaning the house was always full and loud around holidays. 

It was good when he wanted to have friends over, and when he got a bigger bedroom. He’d never had to share a room before, and even though he’d been told over and over it was annoying, Sam wished for an older sister or a younger brother to fill the space of the house with. 

Especially because he was facing a long weekend with just him and his parents in the house, now that he couldn’t just call up Josh for an extended hangout. Maybe he’d talk to Donna or CJ. Or he’d catch up on some of his reading. There was old reliable; staring at his ceiling playing with a Rubix cube and thinking about his college applications. Fifteen colleges, fifteen essays, and who knew how many different letters he'd need by this time next year. Okay, Sam knew. It was Thirty-six. 

“Sam, the phone’s for you,” his mom calls from the kitchen. Sam leaves his dad packaging the ornaments away and finishing hanging up lights. 

“It’s a _girl_ ,” Sam’s mom says in that singing lilt of hers. It’s too funny to hurt, at this point. Sam pulls a guess out of the air, of who he hopes for. 

“CJ?”

“She’s on the phone.” His mom smiles into her mug of hot chocolate and goes off to whisper to his dad. It’s not like Sam would never come out to them. It’s just that he didn’t want to tell his parents. Ever. 

He’d get the whole, ‘What about grandkids’? speech and how they never saw this coming because he didn’t wear a leotard and do ballet as a kid. 

Sam remembers Josh wanted to be a ballerina when he was little, before physically shaking the thought out of his head. 

“Y’hello?”

“Sam?” Donna’s voice is laced with static on the other end. 

“What’s up?” 

“You free on Saturday?” 

Sam covers the phone and yells into the living room. There’s the sound of deliberation, the asking for more details, and the confirmation. 

“Yeah, should be. Why do you ask.”

“Come over, we’re having a friend's Thanksgiving get-together.”

Sam almost sighs in relief from the prospect of actually having something to do this long weekend. 

“Should I bring food?”

“By Thanksgiving I mean I’m ordering pizza and making cookies.”

“Ten-four.”

“See you at four?” 

“Er, I mean-” 

Donna crackles in a laugh on the other end.

“No, I know. I mean, be there by four.”

“Gotcha.” 

Sam hangs up with a click. The house smells like turkey and fir, and for the first time in a while, he thinks that maybe he can be okay without Josh. Out of sight, out of mind.

\------------------------------------------------------

This is shattered when Sam knocks on Donna’s door, bringing her favorite kind of chips, and he sees Josh chatting with Toby in her living room.

“You’re late!”

Sam swallows the knot in his throat and smiles.

“I come bearing gifts?” 

Donna glances him up and down and takes the Doritos.

“Alright, you’ve paid me off, just this once.” 

He slides off his coat and hangs it next to Josh’s on the hooks. The burst of warm air in the house compared with the bite of the cold outside is the only comfort Sam can focus on as he undoes his scarf and bends down to untie his shoes.

“I’d tell you to keep them on but-” Donna shrugs.

“But I won’t listen to you.” Sam finishes her sentence for her and she leaves him. Donna’s holding this gathering, meaning Joey is guaranteed to be here. It also means Toby, CJ, and regrettably, Josh, are the probable guests. Sam takes extra time untying his shoes until he hears Donna step into the living room. 

He follows her in, careful to plaster a smile on his face and keep talking and to never, never look at Josh. 

It seems like Josh is set on doing the same. It’s like he doesn’t even know Sam is there. If they’re all in conversation, they bounce off each other without looking and nodding to the vague area of space where the other sits. A few minutes in it’s obvious there’s more tension than there should be for a normal Sam And Josh argument, and Donna’s anxiously tapping on Joey’s leg as they lean into each other.

It dawns on Sam slowly, and then all at once in a cascade of his evidentiary stupidity, that this is a setup. A trap. A quiet and subtle intervention to try and force him and Josh in a room together for five minutes so they have to converse. Of course, that’s not the only focus; they’re all of them close to each other and they’d have a nice get-together. But Sam notices that they are in three distinct pairs. Donna and Joey, always each other’s number ones in a group. CJ and Toby, who are the same despite the general feeling one got that they didn’t like each other very much, yet almost always got along well. 

And then Sam and Josh. Josh and Sam.

Normally this was not a problem. But it is now. 

“I don’t think she will!” Josh’s voice cracks upwards on the last word, the way it did when he got emotional. 

“Why not?” 

“Toby, she’s the principle of our high school, not a utilitarian dictator.”

“You think it’s utilitarian to fund a second ceramics class?” Toby rubs his eyes and Sam is stuck trying to figure out what they’re talking about while he’d been staring off into space.

“That’s not what I said.”

“That is, literally what you just said.” 

“No, it’s not! You’re putting words in my mouth!” Josh all but shouts, his voice twisting this way and that like a shiny jumping frog. 

“Are you two incapable of having a conversation, without fighting?” Joey says. She signs the word for ‘fight’ at the end, her hands clenched in fists crossing over each other in a short, angry movement. 

“We’re not, _fighting_!”

“We’re not!” 

Toby and Josh exclaim at the same time. They meet each other’s eyes for a half-second before Toby snorts and looks down at his feet.

“No more homework, no more gov, we’re on vacation,” CJ says. 

“What else do we talk about?” Josh snorts

“I don’t know Joshua, you’re grown, figure it out. Football, video games, whatever you guys talk about.” 

Times like this CJ slipped into her big-sister mode and could argue on and off with josh for the better part of an hour. 

“As opposed to what the ladies talk about? What’s that, hand lotions and flowers?”

“Strong words from a man who uses three-in-one,” Joey says. 

Sam laughs into his lap as Josh rolls his eyes. For a second, Sam looks at him, out of some impulse to always find Josh’s eyes, and Josh is staring right back. 

Josh blinks and breaks away from him, staring pointedly at the floor, at the TV, at his shoes. Anywhere but Sam. 

The last wall of resolve Sam has crumbles and breaks open like a rotting dam. He’s tired of hoping things will get better, tired of waiting for Josh to come to his senses so he can finally talk to him. He’s tired of treating Josh with kid gloves when Josh has no trouble being childish in the worst way. 

“I’ve gotta get the food, Joey?” Donna signs her name and puts a hand on Joey’s shoulder. They leave together, half-smiling in a way that Sam is too angry and exhausted to think about.

CJ and Toby leave too, encased in a cloud of overlapping chatter that Sam wouldn’t have been able to see through in the best of circumstances. 

Soon he does the slow math and realizes it’s just him and Josh sitting in this room, five feet of space between them. Sam’s side against the couch and Josh sitting in the armchair. 

Josh speaks first.

“This their idea of a joke?”

“Maybe.” Sam doesn’t want to give him anything. Josh doesn’t deserve to know how much Sam needs this, or how much Sam wishes Josh would disappear and never talk to him again.

“You really don’t have anything else to say?”

“What?” Sam rubs his eyes. 

“You’re always the one talking, you know?” 

Josh is right. Sam is terrible at this silent-treatment thing. That’s always been Josh’s forte, and it kills him to limit everything into one-word responses. At some point, he’s going to explode like a baking soda and vinegar volcano. Ugly and messy and not without his fair share of regret. 

“What do you want from me?”

“Oh, he speaks!” Josh throws his hands up and cocks his head sideways in a wholly patronizing gesture, although Sam doesn’t have the space to explain why.

“Just . . . be quiet.”

“Or what?”

Sam almost laughs.

“Seriously? Now you wanna talk?”

“Not to you.”

“Right,” Sam says, “I forgot. ‘Cause we’re not friends anymore.” 

Josh’s eyebrows slowly relax and he softens into a blank stare. Josh won’t look at him, but Sam refuses to stop. 

“I mean I’ll talk if all you want from me is to _talk_ , gee why didn’t you mention it earlier?” Sam spits.

Josh has gone quiet, crisscrossing his legs and sitting up straighter against the back of the chair. He moves a hand to his opposite shoulder like he’s trying to massage the muscle.

“You lied to me. You’re a liar and you’re an _asshole_.” 

Sam is breaking apart at the seams, words leaving his mouth like bits of thread and stuffing, and no matter how hard he tries, not the horror in his hands or Josh with his deer in the headlights eyes can stop him. 

“And you meant it this time. There’s so, _so_ much that you don’t _mean_ to do, and sometimes knowing it’s on accident is the only thing that makes it alright. But it’s not now.”

“What do you want me to say?” Josh says, his voice rising with every syllable. His jaw is clenched, hard, and his eyebrows are worried.

“The truth!” Sam yells.

It’s truly yelling, it scares Sam to hear his voice crack and split open like that. 

It scares Josh too because Sam is usually the wet and quiet kind of angry. The tears are blocked back and clog his throat, and they stop all the words from flowing out like a thin mesh net. 

Now it’s like Sam’s falling, his arms flailing outward and waiting until he hits the concrete. 

“You want the truth?”

“Yeah.” Sam nods his head up.

“You’re just desperate and embarrassed that things aren’t going your way, and it’s my fault now.”

The front door opens and closes, and Donna’s voice filters in but Sam can’t hear her. He feels like a little boy hiding in the corner, pulling his knees to his chest. His mouth is dry and he wishes for a glass of water like this is the debate stage.

“It is your fault!”

“If you’ll just let me-”

“I’m tired of letting you!” Sam explodes. This is hurting, this is breaking, but God if it doesn't feel good to throw it all away. 

Donna and Joey are standing in the doorway of the living room, CJ and Toby not far behind them. 

Sam is reminded of F Scott Fitzgerald. Simultaneously enthralled and repelled, and Sam is the show. 

“The lying, the hiding, the pretending you’re better than me when this is all on you.” 

“It is _not_ all on me-”

Sam walks all over him. 

“Of course it’s embarrassing. You kick me to the curb like I’m nothing, like you didn’t push me away, like you’re not- like you _weren’t_ my closest friend in the world, like I haven’t-” 

Sam takes a breath that comes in much shakier than he wants it to be. He swallows down the words in a glob. 

“Like you haven’t what, go on say it,” Josh snaps.

Sam rubs the corner of his eye with the edge of his sleeve, taking the tear away before it can spill over. He hates the way it makes him feel like a sniffling kindergartener. 

CJ opens her mouth to say something, and Sam thinks she does. He’s hearing everything through water and glass like he’s a goldfish going in circles. 

CJ looks like she’s going to step forward into the living room and stop them from ripping each other to shreds until Toby puts his hard just over her elbow and catches Sam’s eyes. There’s a startling amount of age in there, like Toby’s seen this before and knows how it needs to end. So Sam tears into him. 

And he says, “I hate you.” And he means it. 

He means it because Sam loves him so much he wants to throw up. If he sticks his finger down his throat, like he’s a dog that’s swallowed chocolate, maybe he can cough up the lump in his heart that’s holding onto Josh Lyman.

“The feeling’s mutual,” Josh speaks through clenched teeth. 

“I don’t have anything, _anything_ else to say to you.” Sam gets to his feet, looking for his jacket that isn’t there and sliding on his shoes without trying them. 

“Then why are you still talking?” Josh is standing up now, keeping a hand on the armchair. His knuckles are white and his chest is rising and falling so hard Sam can see it under his sweater.

Sam blinks and something falls in his face. He wipes a hand over his nose again, pushing his glasses up on impulse, and slides his scarf jerkily over his neck. Why is he always crying? He feels so fragile, on top of everything, and there's the burn of shame. 

“I’m sorry guys.” Sam says after a beat. He casts a look at Donna and can only concentrate on her shoes; they have little wisps of snow on their sides and are forming a puddle on the hardwood floor. 

Donna’s eyes are full, shining, and her lips are quirked down. 

“I can’t.” 

Josh is right. Sam, the one with all the words, can’t find them right now. The quiet feels alien and Sam slams the door a litter harder than he knows he should, as if the sound can shake off the void.

Not for the first time, he realizes he doesn’t have a car to go home in. This time it’s softly snowing, and Sam could have stopped and starred at the beauty of it all if not for the thinness of his coat and his lack of gloves. 

He walks down Donna’s driveway, almost slipping on an iced spot, and burrows his head further into his coat when her door opens again. It’s Toby, with his coat zipped up high and keys in his hand. 

Wordless and soundless, Toby shuffles around the slick patch of the driveway and walks past Sam. He reaches his car parked two houses down and it unlocks with a beep. 

Sam doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing, but he can’t go back into that house after blowing up at Josh. The weight of their words settles on him the same way the snow does; in layers so light he doesn’t realize it until his shoulders ache with the cold. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam says to no one in particular. The air rewards him with the brief puff of his breath, visualized against the white.

Toby remains silent when Sam gets in the passenger seat, not even looking at him. He quietly starts the car, clicks his seatbelt on, and then turns to stare at Sam.

“ _What?_ ” Sam mouths. It’s meant to be a full word, then he tries for a whisper, but no noise will come out past the soft movement of his lips.

“Seatbelt.”

Sam bites the inside of his cheek. He starts smiling, then breathing heavier, then fully doubled over laughing with the absurdity of the situation. The snow, the yelling, Toby being so like and unlike _Toby_ at the same time. Seatbelts, of all things. As if things like a car crash could hurt him. As if his body still pumped blood, as if the rules of the universe had not been fundamentally altered with a few words throw on Donna’s living room carpet. 

There’s that sticking wetness on his face again, and Sam knows this time it's really crying. Not the pushed down sniff of a few tears but a nuclear weapon detonating. Toby still doesn’t say anything as Sam remains doubled over, the laughing turned into something choking and wet. Sam presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees those neon specks dancing across his eyelids. 

“Here.” Toby’s second word.

Sam looks up, clenching his jaw and building up the pressure to stop more tears from flowing. Toby is holding out a package of kleenex, and Sam takes it. He blows his nose and wipes his face and shoves the tissues into his pocket in a crushed heap. HIs glasses are smeared with fingerprints and melted snow and tears, everything blending together to create a blur. He tries to wipe off the gunk but it's no use; the glasses slip and slide against his jacket's fabric. 

After a time of crying and cleaning up, Toby simply nods and starts driving. He pulls out of the parking space with ease, with a calm fluidity that both startles and saddens Sam. He's used to the back and forth cautious steps of his own driving, or the slamming jerks of Josh's. Sam rests his head on the window to absorb some of the cold. His forehead is hot and his nose is all blocked up, so the air is a welcome sharpness.

He doesn’t have the motion or the words to tell Toby that they’re nowhere near his house, that he’s west of Donna and this is south. He knows this because the sun rises in the east, sets in the west and because Donna has south-facing windows.

“Where are we going?”

Sam asks this against the window. His words create a layer of moisture on the glass and he reaches a finger up to it. He draws five tally marks with the side of his thumb before the marks are gone again.

“You’re a wreck. Maybe Josh didn’t deserve that, he probably did, but you are completely out of order.” 

“Where?”

Toby doesn’t answer. Instead, he lifts his hands off the wheel and swears when a truck runs through a stop sign and they slam forward. 

“Come on!” That Toby edge to his tone shines through as he raises his voice. 

They edge into the intersection and build up speed again. 

“Seatbelts,” Toby says again.

They drive for another few minutes before coming to a stop, and Toby gets out. Sam waits to wake up and realize this was all a terrible nightmare, but Toby jerks open the door, and Sam, still leaning on it, almost falls out. 

They’re outside Toby’s house, and Sam follows him inside because he really has nothing else to do and nowhere to go. 

Once inside, Toby kicks his shoes off, throws his coat and things on a couch, and makes a beeline for the kitchen. Sam bends down to untie his shoes before seeing the laces like long, dead worms trailing his shoe and remembers he never did them in the first place. Sam slides off his boots and sits them with their toes against the wall. He cups his hands over his mouth and blows, counting to six with each inhale and eight with each exhale. Clinking noises in the kitchen. A car driving past. The TV, or the radio maybe. 

“You’re going to call your parents and tell them you’re spending the night here.” Toby comes back and hands Sam a dark orange mug, filled with something warm.

“What?”

“Microwave,” Toby says like the single word is enough explanation.

Sam takes a sip and tastes tea. It burns his tongue and he goes back for more. 

“You’re not gonna spill your little secrets to me. You’re not gonna pour your heart out. You can if you’d like but I will not be listening,” Toby continues. 

Sam shrugs off his coat and looks for a place to hang it. Toby takes it from him and tosses it on the couch over his own. Sam sets the mug down to get it back from him and Toby places a hand on his arm, the same way he did to CJ.

“But you are hurting, and bad. And you’re going to tell me why, or so help me God, Sam, I will throw you back out in the snow.”

So Sam, putting the tea down and sitting next to Toby on the floor, does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again it will eventually get better, stay in this for the long haul!!


	5. it's too late to say you're sorry say you're sorry still

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again thanks for following along, and drop a kudos and a comment if you enjoyed! positive feedback much appreciated, I'm so excited to actually be wrapping this up! thinking about writing more fics or oneshots or something in this little "universe" *cough cough* donna and joey *cough cough*

“Are you sure you wanna do this?”

“Are you?” Sam jokes. The words form sharp in the air, and Sam rubs his hands together. His thin gloves are soaked through, and the snow is starting to get into his boots. 

Donna crosses her arms and turns around to look at him.

“I’m just saying, it’s very-”

With that Sam pushes the plastic tray she’s sitting on, and Donna slides down the hill with a yelp.

Sam jumps on his own tray like it’s a surfboard, sliding face-first. They’re not even real sleds, they’re old plastic covers to storage bins that just happen to be perfectly sled shaped, and the hill at the park behind their school just happens to be perfectly sledding-shaped with the thick fall of snow and ice that canceled school.

Donna skids to a stop at the bottom, laughing and snorting. 

Sam sticks a hand into the snow, and the ice burns the part of his wrist that’s exposed. He stops just before he can slam into her, and rolls over onto his back on the snow. There’s snow under his neck, snow in his boots, snow down his back too. 

“You are a mean, mean man Samuel Norman.”

Sam scoops up the snow and tosses it at her. It falls in a dusting over her legs.

“Hey! I’m serious, I could have fallen.”

“Onto what?”

“Onto-” Donna gestures wildly and takes her hat off. Her cheeks are pink and her hair is 

sticking up wildly in a way that Sam can only describe as electric. 

“You’re still mean.” She picks up snow and tosses it onto his chest.

“Stop it, I’m freezing.”

“You’re freezing?” Donna holds up her un-gloved hands and looks herself up and down. 

“You have my gloves! You have a coat!”

This was true, they were Donna’s gloves. They were blue with little snowflakes printed on the back of them. Donna had on a brown hoodie and corduroys, both caked with snowy crystals.

Sam shook his head to get the snow off his neck, but that just sent more down the back of his wool jacket. It was like the snow was out to get him.

“It’s still cold.”

“Sam it’s thirty degrees. Counting windchill.”

Sam stands up to shake the snow off of his shoulders and kicks his legs out. He knows he looks like a snail that’s had salt poured on it, but it does feel like there’s less snow caught in his jacket.

“You are painfully, stubbornly, heartbreakingly from Minnesota.”

“I can say the same for you, California boy.

“Race you to the car?” Sam picks up his sled and already has his feet planted towards the parking lot. 

“Absolutely not.” Donna picks up her sled and looks at the inside of her hat with a frown. Sam walks back to ask her what’s wrong until he sees that look in her eyes a little too late. Donna takes off running, the track star in her quickly coming to light. Sam scrambles with his sled and takes off after her, the cold air burning his throat and the snow under his sock stabbing him with each step. 

She beats him to the parking lot almost easy, putting her hands on her head as she leans against the hood of Sam’s car. The fact that there’s a thin line of snow over it doesn’t seem to bother her. It’s like her corduroys are completely impervious to the elements, and Sam thinks through a joke about putting flex seal on his clothes as he doubles over next to her. 

“You alright there?” Donna bends down to look at him, genuinely worried, which makes it even funnier.

Sam holds up a hand and sucks in a few deeper breaths, his lungs prickling with each inhale.

“That’s it I’m not meant for this. I don’t like winter. I don’t like activities. I’m supposed to live somewhere warm and participate in academic sports.”

“Debate is not a sport.” 

“Yes, it is!” Sam whines. 

“Okay.”

Sam unlocks the car and knocks as much snow off his boots as he can before sliding in. The beach towels on the driver’s and passenger’s seats come into use. 

“That’s less of an ‘okay, you’re right’ and more ‘okay, I accept you are wrong’.”

Donna slides in and tosses her hat on the dashboard.

“And it will not be changing.”

Sam puts the car in reverse, feeling it click and hum for a moment.

“Sam.”

“What?”

“You have to look before you back out.”

“Oh. Right. But there’s-” 

The argument that there are no other cars here dies on his lips. Trust his friends to be the most uptight teenagers on the planet about the rules of the road. The parking lot is empty, their own tire tracks covered with a dusting. In another hour they’ll be completely covered. Like they were never here. As he leans over the seat Sam thinks about the idea of covering things up like that, God-like. 

The snow on his nose could have come from anywhere. It came from the lakes of Minnesota, it came from the shores of the pacific, it came from a puddle in Kenya through clouds and oceans and dirt just to end up on Sam’s radio. Sam’s car’s radio. Sam’s dad’s car’s radio.

“Shit,” Sam mumbles. He turned the wheel the complete opposite direction he was supposed to and slams the breaks. 

“It’s the-”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He pulls back again and leads them out of the parking lot, slower than he needs to go. He can hear the grating push of the snow under his tires. 

Moments like this, he can’t believe it. Any of it. He can’t believe that they have this one week left until school’s out, three days until he gets his SAT scores, twelve days until Christmas. It’s like he blinked after summer vacation closed and in the split seconds he closed his eyes the snow appeared and changed everything around him.

While he’s in the business of counting, it’s been eighteen days since he fought with Josh. Much more than that since they were normal. The eighteen days, the-Sam runs the numbers-about four hundred thirty hours feel like both the blink of an eye and the stretch of a year. Someone could have told him it had been months since he and Josh spoke and he would believe it. 

“You alright?”

“Yeah, just. You know.”

“Overthinking.”

Sam sighs.

“Donna-”

“No, you can’t keep doing this. Everything is alright until you let your head shut up for a second, and then you go right back to thinking about him. He does not get to live in there, rent-free.”

Sam makes a little too wide left turn and Donna grabs the door without emotion.

“I thought you didn’t believe in paying rent.”

“I don’t, but that’s not the point.”

Sam doesn’t respond, because he knows she’s right. It’s like in that rom-com he and Kate watched with CJ. He needs ‘closure’. Or whatever. He needs to tell Josh “I’m done with this, for real” and walk away from him without crying or kissing him again. And right now Sam’s not sure he can do either.

“I will.”

Donna nods wisely, her eyes fixed on the road.

“Turn right up here.”

“What?”

“We’re getting coffee.”

Sam chuckles under his breath but looks over his shoulder and switches lanes anyway. He liked this about Donna, her ability to not get stuck on things. Sam hides in his own head so often, he doesn’t know how to get on his own most times. And for Donna, it seems almost easy for her to pull him out of the water.

Sam pulls into the drive-through of the Dunkin’ Donuts, ready to rattle off Donna’s order that he’s memorized by now. 

“I tell you about last Sunday yet?”

Donna sips her iced coffee -caramel and mocha with whole milk- and kicks her boots off. Her socks have little gingerbread men on them.

“What about it?”

Sam spent last Sunday trying to study for his engineering test and procrastinated by reading the entirety of That Was Then, This Is Now. It hit a little too close to home, and he tries not to think about Mark Jennings.

“Joey and I went out.”

Sam stays in the middle of unwrapping his straw and raises his eyebrows towards Donna.

“Elaborate.”

“You know what now that you ask, I don’t think I will.” 

“Donna!” Sam stretches the last syllable, stabbing his drink-iced coffee -french vanilla, oat milk- and staring at her in disbelief.

“She called me the day before and asked if I wanted to go ice skating with her, and we did.”

Sam feels decisively like a teenage girl at this point, sipping iced coffee with his friend and gossiping in a car when they should have been at school. Never mind that school was canceled, there was still a thrill in it.

“Donna.”

“And we went to Panera for dinner.”

“ _Donna_.”

“We got matching socks at target and we’re hanging out again before Christmas, that’s it!” Donna moves to kick him on the thigh and Sam swats her leg away.

“So did you hang out or did you-” Sam raises his eyebrows again widens his eyes.

“Yes Sam, we hung out.”

“But did you hang _out?_ Was it hanging out, chilling, whatever, or was it _hanging_.”

“You just said three or four words there that mean the same thing.”

For her part, Donna is smiling into her coffee and rests her feet on the dashboard, tapping her foot to the music. The radio is playing something Sam doesn’t know but that’s been shuffled through for the last few weeks. 

Fine, Sam can be the quiet one. He takes another sip of his coffee and turns the heat up another degree.

No, actually he can’t be quiet.

“Was it hanging out as friends or hanging out as more than friends? Like was it normal hanging out or was there something else. It sounds like a date but I’d think you’d actually call a date a date, there’s so much room for error in assuming what’s supposed to go on, so. . .” Sam trails off as he sees Donna staring at him, that same little look in her eyes and in the corners of her mouth that tells him exactly what he needs to know.

“That’s the thing, I don’t know!” Donna groans.

“You went ice skating,” Sam states, shifting into that tone of voice he uses for MUN or debate, clipped and laying down facts like they’re pieces on a chessboard.

“Yeah!”

“You went ice skating alone, the two of you.”

“I had to help her, she’s not very good at it.” At this, a smile pulls at Donna’s lips as she tries to drink more coffee. 

“You taught her how to ice skate. You went there just the two of you, and you went to Panera of all places afterward.”

“And we got these little socks from Walmart!” 

“Donna. _Donna_.” Sam repeats himself until Donna looks at him, that same smile that she’s only barely trying to suppress beaming out.

“That was a date. What did she say when you guys went home.”

“She said it was fun and she wants to see me again after school on the twentieth!” Donna gets squealing by the end of the sentence, her eyes twinkling with something that could just be snow on her lashes but probably runs much deeper.

“I like her a lot. Like, a lot a lot.”

The words put a series of needles through Sam’s heart, deflating it a bit. He quickly applies rubber cement on it, willing himself to not make this about him. This is not about him, Donna deserves this. Still, there’s a stricken match of jealousy in him, if only because it seems so much easier for her and for them. 

“That was almost one-hundred percent a date. I’m sure of it.”

“What if it’s not? What if she’s just being a good friend and I’m the only reading into it?”

Sam laughs and puts his coffee down. It’s getting darker by the minute and as much as he doesn’t want to leave, he still has homework.

“She was the one who asked you, both times!”

“Look behind you.”

“I’m aware of how to drive a car Donatella.”

They talk and sing and laugh along to the songs on the radio, making fun of the pop singers but bobbing their heads because they’re catchy anyway. This kind of moment is one Sam wants desperately to capture. This is a moment he wouldn’t mind obsessing over and picking apart with tweezers in his brain. His feet are cold and soaked, his hair smells like snow and coffee, and it’s almost Christmas time. 

As he always does in these meta-moments, Sam rests on Josh and feels a dull and familiar ache. It’s there, but it’s not everything, and this time Sam takes a breath and just turns the volume down.

\------------------------------------------------------

The bell rang a minute ago for the last period, but Sam’s dawdling in Ms. Griffith’s classroom picking up all his stuff and talking about the latest Jeopardy! episode.

“For the life of me I had no idea about that Foucalt question, never would have guessed.”

“It was odd, wasn’t it.” 

There’s a knock on the door CJ is lingering in the frame, smiling back and forth between them. 

“Don’t you have your own class to be in Seaborn?” CJ slides her messenger bag off and places it on a desk in the frontmost table.

“She’s kicking me out,” He says to Ms. Griffith in mock hurt. After exchanging goodbyes and wishing both of them a happy holiday, Sam all but skips out of the classroom. Even though it was cold and grey and he had a lot of work over break, Sam felt the Christmas spirit bleeding into him. They’d be flying to California the next day, taking a flight in the night. Sam had his suitcase packed and slid under his bed for a few days now. He missed California, the ocean, the sun. It’d still be cold there, but he was determined to visit the ocean at least once before they left. 

Sam slide his English book into his locker; he’d already read A Christmas Carol and had a copy in his suitcase. 

He puts away his Gov textbook and stops at the sight of a neon green post-it note stuck to the side of the locker. Like his room, even if it was messy (which it seldom was) Sam kept a record of where his things were, and he did not remember sticking this here.

Sam peels it off and his stomach drops at the sight of the handwriting. Heavy print, sharp and wide. All capital letters and the o’s that he never closes quite right. 

_HEY. MEET ME RIGHT AFTER SCHOOL BY THE BLEACHERS? I’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU. SOMETHING I NEED TO SAY._

He sticks the note in his back pocket, then for fear there was a hole in that pocket, he switches it to his front. Josh is not going to ruin his Christmas spirit. Josh doesn’t even celebrate Christmas. All the same, Sam’s heart is pounding and he keeps drifting to the window in Physics. He’s not going to cry over this, but he’s sure not going to be calm about it. It was, as far as he was concerned, a healthy medium.

Sam takes his time getting his things ready again, but careful not to be the last one in the classroom. He drops his pencil on the floor after trying to pick it up twice and his cheeks burn. He will not be a child about this. He will not let this get the best of him. He’ll hear whatever Josh ‘need’s' to say, and then he’ll go to California.

Maybe he’ll stay there forever and if this is embarrassing he’ll never have to face Josh again. Although it's a fantasy, Sam’s heart jumps up and down, and shouts ‘No!’ like a toddler. Sam has, for all his dreams about the ocean, gotten quite used to living here and being with his friends. In fact, they’re all better than the kids he knew in Cali, with Josh being the exception.

“Hey, Sam!”

A voice in the hall calls out to him, and Sam sees CJ waving to him.

“Have a good time in California! You spending New Year’s there?” She makes her way across the sea of people to lean against the wall with him.

“Yeah, I’ll be back after that though.”

“Do me a favor, bring me a rock, my mom collect’s ‘em from all the states.”

“Will do.” Sam nods and turns towards the exits, but stops in his tracks after a few paces.

“I’m seeing Josh.”

CJ stops, turns, and her eyes are wide.

“You’re-”

“Not that,” Sam says, quick to read her facial expression and her penchant for thinking ten steps ahead of the rest of them.

“I’m talking to him, right now actually. He asked to talk about something.”

CJ blinks and then shoves him.

“What are you doing here then? Go! Merry Christmas!” She starts walking backward and nods to the exit. 

“Merry Christmas!” Sam shouts after her as her back is turned, and she gives him a little salute without turning around.

Sam wraps his scarf around his neck with one hand, using the other to sling his bag over his shoulder. It’s an unusually warm day, melting the top layer of the snow, but it’s still winter and still barely snowing. It makes everything look like a fog, flakes clogging the air. 

He purposefully takes the walk to the bleachers as slow as possible, placing his feet one in front of the other with meaning. By the time he gets there his fingers are cold and he’s huffing air through his scarf to keep them warm. Josh is waiting there, without a hat or scarf or gloves, and looking completely unbothered by the temperature or the layer of snow on his hair. 

“Hey,” he says. Josh startles and turns around, brushing snow from the bleachers off of his arm. The field is covered in white, the sky thick with cloud, and it’s easy to imagine that the entire world is this vast nothingness outside of Josh and him, right here and now. 

“Hey.” It comes out croaky and Josh clears his throat. They both have the decency to look embarrassed. After that long talk with Toby Sam spent days regretting the fighting and the yelling. Even Toby agreed Josh deserved it, but the fallout was nuclear.

“I wanted to talk.”

“So talk.” Sam can’t help the bitterness that lays under his tongue.

Josh shrinks a bit, but takes a breath and carries on. He’s working this pen in his hands, clenching it and turning it like it’s the only thing keeping him here. Sam still can’t believe that it’s just Josh in his long-sleeve mock-vintage Carter shirt, a denim jacket, and no gloves. 

“I’ve been talking to Stanley a lot more. My guy.” 

Sam wants to point out, as he always does, that Stanley is not a “guy”, Stanley is his therapist and Josh should call it like it is. All Sam knows about Stanley is he’s been there for Josh for longer than Sam’s known him, and Josh has brought him up all of four times. The third was last summer when he finally told Sam his sister’s name at a sleepover and explained in the briefest of terms how she died. It ended with Josh crying on Sam’s bed, Sam wrapping his arms around him, and Josh giving him that one word of “Fire.” But this is the fourth time in two years, and he knows it’s big, so Sam holds his tongue.

“And I’m sorry Sam, I’m _so_ sorry.” The words fall out in a cascade.

For the life of him, Sam has never heard Josh say he was sorry like that. Josh is all confidence and smooth walking and moving on to task after task so fast you barely had time to keep up with him let alone notice he’d done something wrong. 

“About what happened and about all my stuff. You were right, and I was wrong, and I’m sorry. I’m-” Josh looks up at Sam’s eyes, and takes another breath.

“I’m talking to him more. I’m working through my bullshit. And I needed to say sorry because the way I treated you was wrong, I was an asshole and it was wrong. And no matter my intention or my mistakes, it hurt you and I shouldn't have put it all on you. It wasn’t fair.” Josh sounds like he’s reading from a script, but strangely it doesn’t make him sound less sincere, rather, more so. Josh is a guy of impulse, of throwing things to the wall and seeing what stuck and then moving on before anyone had a chance to question him. He sounded- well, he sounded like Sam, picking and choosing his words carefully. 

Sam doesn’t know what to say.

“So I’m sorry. For everything. For pushing you away, for the lying, for that night in the bathroom, it was just-” Josh breaks off and waits. Sam lifts his gaze from Josh’s hands and meet’s his eyes. Josh finally exhibits some signs of noticing the weather around them and sups his hands together in front of his mouth, warming them up. The tips of his ears and nose are red. 

“That’s the apology. That’s the part where if you want to leave and never talk to me again you’re welcome to.”

Sam shakes his head.

“No. No, I- thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Just- Can I explain it?” Josh throws his hands up at the look Sam shoots him.

“I’m not gonna pull you into it. You can turn around and walk away any time you want. He just said I should-Stanley. To say it out loud.” 

This is uncharted territory. This is Josh raw and unformed and practiced all at the same time. There’s no snark in his lips, no efforts to turn this around and stir up another fight. It’s just Josh, practicing this speech in the mirror before reciting his carefully planned thoughts to Sam while they shiver together.

And after everything, everything, this is better than Sam could have hoped. This is Josh stepping up to bat as Sam has always goaded him into doing, and Sam starts to think maybe, maybe there is something here. Maybe they can salvage this, maybe there’s some strength in the foundation, some good bones in the rubble. He wants it, desperately. 

“To say what?”

“You were right to say I had to work through my own-” Josh gestures with a clenched fist to his chest- “My own stuff. And that night when I said we weren’t friends, that was kinda a lie too.” 

“Then why did you say it? It was cruel and you know it.” Sam spits, still moody through all the well-concealed hope. 

Josh takes a moment, blowing into his hands and pulling his jacket a little tighter around himself. Sam has the urge to take off his gloves and give them to him, the way Josh did so many times that first year Sam moved when he forgot day after day how sharp the cold could be. 

“Because I didn’t wanna be your friend. I-”

Sam cuts him off, confusion flooding into his optimism. 

“Why did you ask me here if you were just gonna be an ass again?”

“Would you let me-” Josh stops. This conversation is turning out to be choppier than they’d ever been, lots of stopping in their tracks and cutting each other off at the edge.

“Like I said. I’m trying to say,” Josh says, his voice softer. He slides the pen into his pocket and Sam sees writing on his hand like he was cheating on a test. A smile pulls at his throat.

“I didn’t- I don’t wanna be _just_ friends. I like you, Sam. I _liked_ kissing you, and I got scared. And I dealt with it all wrong, I’d been trying to explain ever since but you didn’t listen, and I don’t blame you.” Josh goes quiet, looking at his shoes like he’s a kid that’s been scolded. 

The silence is so freezing that Sam thinks the snow itself has stopped falling around them. Time, transfixed. 

Half of Sam wants to grab Josh by the shoulders and shake him and yell at him for being so mean and so stubborn and thick-skulled. Half of Sam notices that same old and familiar feeling of wanting to grab Josh by the shoulders, tell him off for being so mean and stubborn and thick-skulled, and then kissing him at the end of it. But that can’t happen, not now. 

“What?”

“I- don’t make me say it again. I like you. And that’s what makes it so unfair and stupid, and I can’t say I’m sorry enough.”

Sam crosses the space between them and pulls Josh into a hug, letting Josh tuck his head into his shoulder and wrapping his arms around him tight. 

“Is it cliche if I say that’s all I wanted from you, you fucking idiot?” Sam laughs despite himself. They break apart, both of them shoving each other.

“I know it- I know it’s gonna take time, and I have to keep, well, you know. Working. But I wanna be friends again. Still. I don’t know,” Josh trails off and rubs a hand on the back of his neck, and Sam notices a stronger flush in his cheeks that can’t just be from the cold. It occurs to Sam that it is totally in the realm of possibility that Josh asked to meet here so Sam couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed while talking. Concerningly within the realm of possibility.

“I wanna keep being friends. If we stopped,” Sam says. 

“I think we did, for a bit.”

“Can we try again?”

Sam bends his head down, kicking at the snow. It’s like Josh said. Time. Trying again. A lot of him teasing Josh and making him apologize again until he can without rehearsal, like a normal healthy person.

“I wanna try again,” Josh breathes. Their words collide seconds after they’re spoken, swirling up in the air. Sam rubs his hands together as Josh sticks his own in his pockets.

“I’m going to-” Sam cuts off and laughs, looking at his watch.

“I’m going to California tomorrow, I gotta get home.” The terrible irony of finally starting to fix this thing between them, to find their way back to each other, and Sam has to go to the other side of the country.

Josh chuckles and runs a hand through his hair shaking the snow again. His hair is just long enough that the strands are starting to fall under their own weight, curls opening up at the base of his neck and over his forehead. It’s at a stage where it looks the best- see cutest- in Sam’s opinion, which means Josh is gonna get it cut soon.

He should probably stop focusing on Josh’s hair or that feeling about grabbing him and kissing him is gonna come back in full force. 

“You want me to drive you?” Josh shoulders his backpack and is already cutting across the field to the parking lot.

Sam doesn’t respond, he just follows him across the snow. They walk in silence, crunching across the snow. It’s a new silence, a new kind of waiting. Normally, before, Sam would always rush to fill it with ramblings as a sort of misdirection. If he just kept speaking, he could run circles around Josh and not let him in. 

They get into Josh’s car and only then does Sam register exactly what Josh said. Josh likes him, present tense. He made sure of saying that. He left behind the cut-offs and vague language and said it, outright. 

Driving along in almost silence and Christmas songs on the radio, Sam rewinds the tape in his head and starts to overthink it.

 _I liked kissing you_. That’s what he said, Sam was sure of it. He had a memory like an elephant for things he paid attention to, and he was definitely paying attention to that. On impulse, Sam reaches up to press his lips with the back of his knuckles.

“Will you be back after New Years'?”

Sam startles.

“From California?”

“Oh-yeah. We’re staying out as long as we can. I miss it there,” He adds on. Sam would have called it absentmindedly except he never says things absentmindedly. All the absent thoughts stay in his head in violent swirls, but they filter down. There’s the easily pinned difference between them; Sam thinks before speaking and Josh thinks _by_ speaking. 

“You thinking of going out there for college?”

“You know me, I’m shooting for the Ivies everywhere. Stanford’s really nice but I’m thinking about Princeton too.”

Josh whistles, as if he hasn’t been dreaming of the same schools since freshman year just the same

“Harvard for you?”

“You know it.”

A new worry worms it’s way into Sam’s head, the worry of the vast and uncrossable distance between Stanford and Harvard, or Princeton and Harvard, or really anywhere that isn’t Harvard and Harvard. He wonders what’s going to happen to them, to all of them when that time comes. Sam can’t stand the thought of their group splintering apart slowly, vowing to see each other each time they come back home but missing people each time until he’s left with memories and a bridge that’s not burned so much as it is rotted from years of neglect. 

Sam wipes away the thought as he wipes at the moisture on the window. 

“I’ll visit you at Princeton if you go there. Not that I’m telling you to go there, just- If you do, you know?” Josh slams the breaks at a stoplight. Sam is reminded of Toby’s lecture on seatbelts that wasn’t really a lecture but a one-word sermon, but it felt the same. 

“No. I’ll visit you at Harvard,” Sam smiles. “You wouldn’t be able to make the drive alive.”

“Who is driving right now?” Josh says, imitating offense and placing his hands on his chest. Sam grabs Josh’s hands and shoves it back towards the wheel with a laugh. That was probably not the safest they could have been in the car, but it gave a nice excuse to feel Josh’s hands again.

“Hands on the wheel and eyes on the road Mister NASCAR.” 

“I would if you stopped being so distracting,” Josh smirked and glanced at Sam one more time, a sparkle in his eyes and his hair now looking a little heavy and damp from the snow. 

Sam couldn’t say anything to that that wouldn’t have resulted in an absolute disaster, so he just wrung his hands together and willed the flush of heat in his neck to go away. 

Was this how it was going to be? There was still a line of awkwardness between them, an uneasiness to which they resorted to the same tried and true jokes and patterns. If they crossed that would it be back to normal, back to before? Or this, whatever _this_ was when you’re in love with your best friend and he at least likes you back, and you both won’t stop outright flirting but always place aside talking about it for another day. And you’re both afraid of that 'another day' ever coming? At least Sam is.

Josh rolls to a stop in front of Sam’s house. 

“That’ll be fifteen bucks.”

“I’ve got two dollars and my lunch.” Sam unlocks the door and holds his bag, not bothering to sling it over his shoulder.

“Thank you. For all of it.” 

“I told you,” Josh smiles without a catch or cleverness, still messing with his hair at the back. He looks in that sheepish moment so unexpectedly and incomprehensibly small. 

“Don’t thank me,” He finishes.

Sam nods and shuts the door. He takes a few steps and looks back. Josh is smiling out at him, not making a move to drive away.

Smiling, Sam walks back to the car and opens the door again.

“What?”

“Making sure you get inside safe.” Josh nods to Sam’s house and Sam all but giggles.

“Merry Christmas Sam.”

“Merry Christmas. Er- Hanukkah?” Sam’s tongue trips over itself and he offers up the single word as a question. It’s all he can say and he doesn’t want to say goodbye. 

Josh chuckles.

“Happy Hanukkah.” Sam tries again.

Josh just beams at him until Sam shuts the door. 

With a click and a controlled roar, Josh starts up the car again. This time Sam waits for him, lingering on the sidewalk until Josh is a red spot making the turn and disappears from view. 

With that he rushes into the house, kicking off his boots and making a beeline for the phone. His parents would be home within the hour and he really needed to make this call without them in the house and their well-meaning but prying questions.

“What’s up?” Donna picks up within two rings.

“I saw Josh today. We talked after school.”

“Oh no- what happened?” Donna’s voice quickly turns to sadness and pity, but Sam shakes his head, even though she’s not here.

“No, it was good. He actually- well we talked and he apologized.”

“Hm.”

“Donna come on that’s _good_.”

“I think he should have gotten on his knees and begged for your forgiveness. What, does he think he can give you a half-assed ‘I’m sorry’ and you’ll go back to normal?”

“You know him, and you know me. He. . .” Sam trails off, twisting the cord on the phone.

“What?” Donna crackles.

“It was real. I don’t know how else to explain it but it was good. He meant it and it was _real_. You know I wouldn’t even start to talk to him if it wasn’t.”

There’s a pause and Donna sighs.

“I think you deserve better.”

Sam laughs in one soft syllable. 

“ _You’re_ just always mad at him.”

“And for good reason!” 

Sam glances at the clock in the living room and squints through his fogged-up glasses.

“He said it himself that he wants to be friends again but he knows it’s gonna take time.” 

“Well, he’s right.” 

Sam takes a breath and lowers his voice, cupping a hand over the receiver. Even though his house is empty and his parents aren’t even pulling up yet, there’s the feeling that this needs to be private.

“He talked to Stanley about us fighting. I think,” Sam swallows, his mouth dry. “I think he spent a lot of time getting here. Apologizing. And it was _real_ , Donna.”

She’s quiet.

“He really brought his shrink into this?”

Sam huffs a quiet laugh.

“Yeah. Means he’s serious. And he told me-”

Sam cuts off, the words on his lips. It would probably just complicate things and start gossip in their group. Besides, Josh was still, well, being Josh and being stubborn and never talking about anything. This wasn’t Sam’s story to tell. Besides, he could keep this for himself. He could save this thing, just for him, even if nothing came of it. Like a scrap of paper in his bedside drawer, he could take it out and hold it to be reminded of its realness.

_I like you. I liked kissing you._

“What’s up?”

“He was sincere about it, I know him well enough to tell and you know me well enough to know I’m not lying. I wouldn’t wanna talk to him if he wasn’t”

Donna is silent for a moment and Sam can hear the sappy smile in her voice as she responds.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Donna!” Sam hops and sits on the kitchen counter, tracing the wood grain of the cabinets to his side.

“I said you’re right!”

“You’ve got that look I know it. You think this is your own personal rom-com.”

“Hey, who says I need you for that.” He hears a shuffling on Donna’s end, meaning she’s just flopped down on her bed, probably right on top of all her homework and books.

“You’re seeing Joey?”

“She’s so sweet Sam! She’s so sweet and I have no idea how to act around her, it’s so _different_ than with guys. I feel way too at ease.” 

“That’s a _good_ thing,” Sam exclaims. 

There’s the crunch of snow and the approaching hum of tires. Sam hops off of the counter and leans as far as he can towards the living room window. His parents. Donna’s still talking about Joey, and he feels bad for cutting her off, but-

“Hey, Donna?”

“I’m sorry was that too much?”

“No, no my parents are here. I’ll call you later tonight, and you can tell me how your date goes,” Sam finishes in a mock sing-song voice he knows will annoy her. Just as his parents unlock the door he hangs up and runs to his room. With luck, he’ll get a few minutes to get lost in his head before they ask how school was, and he’ll have to pretend like Christmas didn’t just come early. 

Sam sits on his bed, leg bouncing in energy.

There’s something there. There’s something between them to be saved, to be pulled out and worked on and drafted until they can get it right. They can get this right. 

Sam puts the tips of his fingers to his lips, thinking. 

_I liked kissing you_.


	6. i know ive kissed you before but i didn’t do it right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here she is, the plus one, the final part! i made this one a little longer because I couldn't just spend the rest of the fic writing about angst and sadness and not come through with a solid happy ending. thank you all for reading this, and as always leave a comment if you enjoyed! they mean a lot.

+1

After winter break, they do try. It’s a slow and clumsy trying, but they work on it. It bends up and down like roller-coaster metal, and they learn to be blacksmiths. Sam thinks of it like restoring a painting. Bringing back what was and changing what needs to be altered. Or digging for fossils; hauling up what used to be, inspecting it with fine bristles, and determining what it means now. 

As the snow melts and reforms on the waiting ground, so do they. They starting hanging out in larger groups again, then smaller, then falling back into the rhythm of seeing each other every day until Sam has re-memorized Josh’s patterns. Over spring break Josh has Sam over for a weekend of sleeping over and they build a fort in the basement over the very spot they kissed. While Sam originally thinks of it as patching up a bloodstain on a carpet, he comes to appreciate the hand-shaped job of the patchwork. 

Sam is reluctant to fully believe the happiness and the optimism of everything. His SAT scores were _good_ , not Princeton ready yet, but _really_ good. Donna and Joey started ‘going steady’ (as Josh calls it just because it annoys Donna) almost right after winter break, and Sam is definitely using his powers of nepotism to get them the cutest couple superlative in the yearbook. And there’s him and Josh.

They feel sound and steady. Like this thing they’ve constructed together is built to last, like if the dam breaks they can hold it up and fit it together. 

The two weeks after spring break Josh appears outside of Sam’s Physics classroom, face lit up like the sun. He’s got his black backpack slung on one shoulder and is wearing his Keith Haring hoodie. Charlie is talking to him in the doorway, giving Sam a few seconds to steal little glances at Josh as he’s not looking. 

Sam’s eyes linger on the space between his neck and collarbone, trying to figure out why he’s so drawn into the purple against Josh’s skin. 

“Plans this weekend?” Josh asks, picking up Sam’s notebook and rolling it into a spiral in his hands. Sam snatches it back and bends its spine, folding the cardboard corners back in place. 

“Sleep, sleep, and more sleep. I’m not going to wake up on Monday at all. You?”

They walk out of the room with the bell, the halls filled with the familiar ebb and flow of students. Sam feels like a salmon swimming the rivers upstream, against the current, less like he is moving but that the world is moving around him. 

“Hey Josh, Sam.” Donna taps Josh on the shoulder as she walks past them, hand-in-hand and step-in-step with Joey. They continue in their opposite directions before Sam can properly turn and say hello. Everyone moves around each other, steady, fast, and constant. 

“Right, I wanted to ask you-”

“I want my shoes back, Sparky.” 

CJ appears beside them, pushing her glasses up her nose and scribbling something on a folded-up worksheet. Each determined step of her’s is paired with a consistent _thump_ sound on the tile, caused by her blue winter boots. Well, _Sam’s_ winter boots.

“No ‘hello’, no ‘how are you’, no ‘how’d the test go old buddy old pal of mine’?” Sam says, being difficult. Josh walks slightly faster than them, spinning open his locker and proceeding with the sliding in and out of books and notebooks. 

“It was not a test, it was _gym_ class,” CJ groans. She shoves the paper in the pages of her textbook, _Street Law: A Course in Practical Law_. It’s faded red cover bends in protest. 

“I did well, not that you care.”

“Sam.”

“Extraordinarily well. I beat my personal best. Again, not like you, you know, care.” 

“ _Sam_ ,” CJ tilts her head and raises her eyebrows at him, at that borderline between laughing and yelling. Giving him enough room to look meek and feign apology but at the ready to bite back.

Sam gestures to his shoes, white sneakers with green lining. Well, _CJ_ ’s sneakers. They’re a size too big, and his boots are a size too small on her. They’re in the tail end of the winter season, spring weather with sporadic days of snow and cold thrown in, meaning Sam’s not quite ready to give up on bringing a change of shoes to school every day in a reused Meijers bag or resign himself to perpetually wet sneakers. It’s just so happened that he forgot that day, and could not run the mile in winter boots.

CJ had stepped up, and Sam made it through the class without issue. Nine minutes forty-three seconds. He counted that as a personal win. 

“You look like a clown in those shoes,” Josh says, gesturing down at Sam’s feet. Sam decides not to dignify him with a response as CJ snorts. 

“They’re _my_ shoes!” CJ all but yells. Still, around them, there’s the unending flow of students, although Sam can see some pairs of eyes drift closer to them. Where CJ talks, people listen. It’s not good, it's not bad; it’s just a fact. 

“They’re your shoes?” Josh scrunches up his forehead, looking between them as Sam kneels down to undo the laces. 

“They’re my shoes,” CJ repeats. She leans against the lockers with a hand and kicks off Sam’s boots. Her socks are red with prints of tropical fish all over them. 

“Didn’t even ask,” Sam grumbles without real annoyance. 

“Next time you forget gym shoes you’ll just have to live in your kamiks and cry about it.” CJ hops on one foot trying to put her sneakers on, balancing her textbook under her elbow. Josh reaches out the grab it from her just as it slips under her grip. 

“You forgot we had the mile today?” Josh asks. He knows Sam forgot. He refused to lend Sam his shoes. He is, once again, being Josh. 

“I forgot.”

“He forgot.” CJ ties her shoes-two bunny ears over each other in a double knot- and takes her textbook back from Josh. 

“You have small feet.”

“You’re two inches taller than me.”

“Three and a half, and don’t you forget it.” CJ smiles and wags a finger at him like she’s scolding a child. 

“See you, Josh. Tell me how the thing goes!” CJ nods at him and continues down the hall, and Josh waves her away. She’s already calling out to someone else as she turns the corner.

“She could be a drill sergeant,” Josh jokes.

Sam puts his books in Josh’s locker and takes out a few loose papers, sliding them in his folder. 

“She could be president,” Sam says. Josh smirks and doesn’t disagree. 

“So I wanted to ask-”

“If this is about the test, honest, I don’t know. Everyone’s been asking me and Ms. Miller doesn’t tell me everything. It’s _Frankenstein_ , it’s not gonna be that hard.” Sam slides the folder into his backpack and zips it closed in one go, final and satisfying. 

Josh rubs his shoulder and purses his lips together. They’re signs he’s stuck, uncomfortable, waiting for something. Tingling spots blink across Sam’s heart, and he pretends not to notice. He does what he does best and fills up the silence.

“I mean just concentrate on the three passages we spent entire days on in class, know what Romanticism is, and run with it. As I said, she doesn’t tell me everything. She tells me some things so I can help the underclassmen. I’m a tutor and a writer, I’m not a spy. And she-”

“She doesn’t tell you everything.”

“Well, yeah.” Sam shuts Josh’s locker and Josh clicks the combination lock closed. There are little scratches and notches around its side, signs of wear combined with hints in case Josh ever forgets the password. 17-24-9. 

“It’s the Lyrid meteor shower,” Josh spits in a single exasperated breath like he’s afraid of the words getting lost.

“What?”

“It’s-”

“The Lyrid meteor shower,” Sam answers his own question.

“If you heard why did you ask?” 

“I was buffering,” Sam waves him off. He’s flipping through mental notes, file cabinets, and folders like he’s a database. Search for: Lyrids. The Lyra constellation. Something about Cygnus, a vulture, and Ptolemy. Sam senses this is something Josh wants to answer and explain for himself.

“Samuel Norman where is our file?” Will Bailey interrupts the assembly line of thought Sam is constructing as he holds up a paper expandable folder. 

“I cannot catch a break,” Josh mumbles.

“What’s up?” This time it’s Will who asks, and Josh who waves him away. Sam can only halfway process what either of them is talking about and he waits for a second for the question and the expandable folder to piece together in his head.

“I gave it to Charlie yesterday, I told you I’d be done early to take the weekend.” Sam shrugs off his backpack and pulls on his coat. 

“Charlie says he gave it to Danny who says he gave it to Kate who says she gave it back to you, and I have yet to take notes on anything in my section.” 

“Ask Kate again, if she doesn’t have it ask Mr. Bartlet and he’ll have a copy somewhere we can get you on.” Sam swings his backpack over his shoulder and nods to the end of the hall, silently asking Josh if he’s ready to leave. Josh smiles and taps his locker. 

“Ah.” Sam realizes.

“Did I?”

“You did.”

A few minutes later Josh fishes the file out of his locker, under Sam’s physics book and over Josh’s loose gov papers. Will all but runs the other direction, no doubt to speed through some last-minute work before the weekend. None of them want any responsibility for the three-day break. Those precious extra 24 hours were to be appreciated and banked. Sam wasn’t worried about Will getting his work done; he never was. He’d come through. 

“The Lyrids are a meteor shower peaking each year in mid to late April.”

“Hey, that’s around now!” Sam checks his watch as if he’d need proof of the date. 

Josh chuckles and presses his lips together, fixed at the middle of Sam’s forehead like there’s something there.

“What?”

“Nothing, you wanna come with me to see them?” 

They push the doors open and are blasted with crisp air. The weather is turning back and forth from cold to hot to just right, the snow melting in floods and then freezing right back up again the next day. Now it’s just brisk enough to turn their breath into thin wisps and straighten Sam’s spine as they walk to Josh’s car. 

“The meteor shower?” Sam side-steps a pile of slush that Josh stomps straight through, bits of grey sludge sticking to the sides of his boots and the edge of his jeans. 

“There’s a camping site, not an hour south of here that’s far enough for you to see them. We can drive out to a field there, I checked and you can. And we’re right,” Josh pauses as they near his car, pointing up and holding his hands to the sky like if he gestures hard enough Sam can already see them, “We’re right on the meteors’ trajectory.” 

Once again Josh sounds like he’s reading from something, his words both softer and measured and yet just as impassioned. Sam pictures Josh looking all this up on his computer, tracing the roads and highways to the campsite on a folded up map, getting lost in the stars.

“How’d you know all that?”

“I have my ways.” Josh tilts his chin up and puffs out his chest, looking like he does after he’s gone twelve rounds in mock congress and pulled a victory clean out of the mud. 

Sam laughs a sensation that comes from deep under his chest and meaning that falls deeper still.

“You serious about this?”

Josh raises his eyebrows and grins, all teeth, all fangs, all coiled spring ready to explode. 

“Deadly.” 

Sam’s always had a bit of a problem saying no to things. Out of all the people in the world, Sam could never ever say no to Josh Lyman. At least, he used to. 

Now he says:

“I don’t know. I’d like to but I was just planning on rest.” 

Josh blinks in surprise, but picks himself up and recovers as they near his car. The van has slush clinging to its wheels and the shadow of evaporated snow and salt over the doors. 

“Think about it, and if you’re up for it call me by tomorrow afternoon.” Josh unlocks the car with a string of curse words, the door frozen and stuck. He yanks at the handle one more time and the door swings open. Josh slips backward with the recoil and nearly falls into the slush with a yelp.

“Don’t say _shit_ ,” Josh says, eyebrows expressing anger but mouth pulled up in a shining grin. Sam is already doubled over with laughter, leaning on the other side of the car with one hand. 

“You can just walk home if you want, mister funny-bones.” 

This sends Sam into more hysterics as Josh throws his backpack into the back seat. 

“‘Mister funny-bones’? Where’d you pull that one from?” Sam opens the passenger side door with no less ease but much more grace, setting his backpack at his feet. 

“It’s an expression.” Josh turns on the heat and shifts into gear.

“Really?”

“An expression that I happened to have made up this moment, yes!” 

Sam snickers and unzips his coat. 

“Young man, I will turn this car around,” Josh threatens as he pulls out of the parking space. 

“Yeah, I should hope so!” Sam gestures wildly around them and Josh finishes straightening the car before realizing and laughs along with him. It feels good to laugh again, really. They’re getting back into the rhythm of things and this laughter together still takes Sam back at how good it can feel. How nice it is to plan his words not out of fear but out of excitement, and settle down into space and time that is comfortable. His heat is steady, measured, sure.

When they get to his house Sam opens the door and closes it again a couple times, sure that if he does not the non-existent snow will all get inside Josh’s car. He does it anyway, and Josh waits outside his door reassuring him with no hint of annoyance that the snow is gone.

“You wanna stay for dinner?” Sam asks as they track snow into the house, exchanging hellos with Sam’s parents.

“Oh stay! It’s been a while since Sam’s dragged you around,” Sam’s mom jokes as she filters through the hallway. 

“No, I couldn’t, already got plans with the folks,” Josh answers easily and without prompt of hassle from Sam, who is busy undoing his boot laces and hiding the blush in his neck. His mom noticed, of course, she did, he got his overbearing sense of observation from her. No doubt there’d be questions from both her and Dad about this being the first time Sam’s actually brought Josh over instead of the other way around in months. They’d been kind enough not to push when he spent afternoons locked in his room and tactfully avoiding any mention of Josh, back when they were fighting, but now it was almost inevitable. 

“We’re gonna go upstairs?” Sam words it like a sentence as they’re already making their way to the staircase, but the upturned lilt in his voice makes it a question, just to give the right of way to his mom. She waves them off, already busy weaving between five different projects. Like mother like son.

Josh follows him up, the hardwood steps turning into the soft carpet under their socked feet. Sam treads lightly, still nervous after all this time about bringing Josh back into his life. Into his room. Into his heart. 

“Tell me more about the Lyrids,” Sam says as they sit down on his bedroom floor, on opposite walls with their legs extended. If he wanted to Sam could turn his foot this way or that and nudge Josh’s. He wants to. 

“You got the full speech. This may come as a surprise, in fact, I know it will, but I actually don’t know everything.” Josh speaks with the cap of his highlighter in his mouth. 

“Yeah, that one’s a shocker.” Sam does not move his feet. “I mean the plan.” 

“Oh. Get us at the campground by 8, pick up dinner on the drive, and we can either sleep in the car there or get home at, like, two am.” Josh rattles off the itinerary.

Sam whistles.

“And your parents would let us?” Sam bends his legs in to stand and stretch, massaging the back of his neck. 

“They’re very hands-off. What about you?” Josh nods. 

Sam grumbles as he sets about putting away his textbooks and getting out some more paper. 

“If we get home late am I staying at your place?” Sam asks this with his back to Josh, still rummaging through his desk like he’s looking for something. With his hands busy in the top left drawer picking up and setting down the same pens and notebooks Sam can concentrate on looking calm instead of being calm. It’s an awkward and bold question, at least for him. Sam is careful of lines drawn and boundaries placed and walls constructed, and inviting himself over in the politest way possible is still inviting himself over.

“Of course,” Josh answers, and Sam can tell he hasn’t even looked up from his work. Easily and without prompt.

Sam just nods and then sits back down. This is a weekend of rest and relaxation, and potentially a lot of fun. Fun isn’t quite the right word for this, but there’s nothing else Sam wants to use to describe a long evening out followed by a sleepover with his recovering-best-friend slash potentially-requited-crush slash long-time-object-of-affection. It would be fun. Fun. 

He extends his legs out again, cuffed jeans creating a sliver of cold air on his ankles. Josh’s socks are plain white, extending under his jeans. Sam’s are blue with white polka-dots. The lack of space between their feet, their calves, their legs, ticks something in Sam. He shrugs his shoulders and gets back to writing. 

“So?” Josh caps his highlighter and reaches to his side to fiddle with Sam’s stereo. The Nirvana album in there is coming to an end and Josh slides another CD in, what it is Sam can’t tell. 

“So what?” Sam crosses out a line in his essay. ‘Ostentatious’, not ‘ostensible’. His head isn’t where it should be. 

The CD starts playing and the beginning of _The Wall_ starts up. Sam cringes at this first song and makes noise with his papers when they question, _Are there any queers in the theater tonight?_ Sam can’t decide if it’s terrible or perfect timing.

“So, what do you think?” 

“About?” 

Josh snorts and runs a hand through his hair. He did cut it soon after winter break, but it’s growing back now and right at that perfect length. Some of Josh’s curls are falling just over his eyes, and Sam knows it probably makes it annoying to see but damn if it doesn’t make his stomach twist over. 

“About going out tomorrow night? We have Monday off, no damage to your precious sleep schedule _or_ your homework.” Josh lists the reasons on his fingers as he rattles them off. He’s got pen marks and highlighter and what looks like _paint_ all over his hands, most of the inky mess concentrated on the sides of his fingers. Messy and confident and fleeting all at the same time. 

“It’ll just depend on how much work I can do now and if the folks are in a good mood,” Sam mumbles and searches for the right word. 

“You could even do work when we drive, it’s just under two hours total.”

“I’ll be able to wrap up _here_ if someone wasn’t bothering me.” Sam smiles and kicks the side of Josh’s leg impulsively. The words need a jolt of energy behind them. Josh kicks him back, jeans on jeans and calves on calves. To prevent this from turning into some giggly and then uncomfortable fight between them Sam bites the inside of his cheek and goes back to work. 

“If I tell my parents we’ll be back a lot earlier and just stay at your house I’d be good,” Sam says after a few minutes. 

Josh doesn’t say anything, just keeps his head down at his work and throws a fist in the air, and starts bobbing his head to the music. 

“I didn’t say yes yet!”

“You did. Your parents just haven’t.”

Sam opens his mouth and then closes it again as he considers. 

“Stop being distracting and let me do my work,” Sam says. He smiles into his papers, giving up on words for now and tracing small chains of circles in the margins. 

\------------------------------------------------------

“Operation Lyrids is a go,” Sam says as soon as Josh picks up the phone. It is exactly noon, giving him exactly six hours before Josh said he would show up at Sam’s door. Six hours to pack up an overnight bag, finish his essay, and call Donna and CJ to worry about this. 

“What?”

“For tonight, I’m good, pick me up at six like we planned.” 

“Really?” There’s the sound of shifting and static on Josh’s end, sounding like he’s been startled up. Sam can see him talking on the couch, hoping to his feet after getting excited and doing some silly little movement of celebration. The image pulls his lips into a pure grin.

“Yeah, I’ll see you then.”

“See you.” 

There’s a minute before Sam hangs up, waiting for Josh, and he can only assume Josh is doing the same for him. There’s something on the tip of his tongue that he wants to say, anything to prolong the conversation and stay in this space. He can almost hear Josh breathing on the other end, smiling. 

Sam hangs up the phone with more force than needed, and picks it right up again. Dial tone, of course. He couldn’t undo the hang-up. Still, Sam places the phone down a little more gently and then picks it up again a few more times, just checking. Just making sure until he feels satisfied that putting down the phone is good enough to be the last time. 

He finishes up his essay with ease, copying the scrawled print into something more legible and polished. Sam would probably end up making a final-final draft on Monday after tweaking with it a bit, but for now, it was as near to perfect as it could be. 

The phone rings for half a beat before Donna answers it.

“What’s up?”

“I’m hanging out with Josh tonight,” Sam says, twirling the cord around his fingers and resuming his spot sitting on the kitchen counter. He taps the cabinets with the edge of his heel in 6/8 time. 

“Hanging out or _hanging out_ ?” Donna mimics the same words Sam pointed at her that day they went sledding. Are you hanging out as friends or more? Can you _ever_ hang out as just friends if you like him and he likes you? Won’t there always be something there? What’s your motive? What do you want? All these unanswerable questions and more line Donna’s lighthearted tone.

“Regular hanging out,” Sam decides. He knows Donna knows he’s uncertain, but she also knows to ignore it. 

“Interesting,” Is all she says. Sam is grateful, again.

“We’re gonna drive out and chase a meteor shower,” Sam says, and as soon as he does reality hits him. His heart speeds, blood in his ears, and blood flushing his neck even though Josh is nowhere near him. Giddiness seeps from his fingertips to his toes and up through his chest cavity. Sam changes the time signature and taps his foot faster.

“Is that even possible? Chasing?” 

“Less chasing more just locating.” 

“Hm.” Donna makes a vaguely interesting noise. The kind of noise that makes Sam imagine Donna sitting with her wet hair and drying nails, scrutinizing a book with high brows and wrinkled nose. He imagines her flipping the pages of a magazine, inside containing the details of Sam’s love-life for her to weigh and filter through her more common-sense oriented brain. If many months ago someone had told Sam he’d be seriously discussing his wreck of a love life with Donna and that she was actually the more reasonable of the two when it came to these things, Sam wouldn’t believe them. Or maybe he would. He’d always been a little too susceptible to other people’s ideas, particularly if they tapped into either his anxieties or his passions. Josh was a subject of, regrettably, both. 

“What do you think?”

Donna sighs and _hm_ ’s again. 

“I think you’re both stupid and neither of you knows what to do now that you’ve gotten to a safe place, so you’re going stargazing and pretending it’s platonic.” 

“It is!” Sam protests. He hops off the counter and goes back to pacing across the kitchen. His feet by muscle memory avoid the squeaky boards in favor of the sturdier ones, and this takes him in a zip-zag of paces from the oven to the fridge to the counter he’d sit on. 

“Tell me what you’re doing.”

“Donna-”

“No go ahead, say it.”

Sam sighs. 

“We’re grabbing dinner on the road, going to a campsite to try and watch the meteor shower, and the sleeping over at his house after.” 

“You didn’t say it right. You’re _watching a meteor shower_ not watching a meteor shower.” Donna measures the inflection of her voice from wonder to throwaway. Sam is aware that this is eerily similar to the conversation he had those couple of months ago with Donna about her and Joey. 

It’s not that Sam believe’s her. It’s also not that he fully believes himself either. Neither are objective parties. Sam’s view of yes and no, real and not real, there or not there, has been twisted and bent out of shape. What he sees as a sign, as something _more_ , is usually just a slight mannerism imperceptibly different from any other sign to anyone that was not Sam. It’s the lingering and the watching and the inability to look for anything that contradicts what he is looking for. 

“Occam’s broom,” Sam realizes, feeling a swell of pride at the fitting identification. A definition meant organization meant he could more easily notice if he was thinking clearly. He could hold up any interaction between him and Josh to the jury in his mind, cross-examine the facts, and consider an objective position. Find a verdict. 

On second thought maybe overthinking was the problem.

“I think that you think that I’m overthinking this,” Sam guesses already knowing the answer. 

“Daily double!” 

“I can’t help it,” Sam protests.

“That’s what I’m here for. Go have fun and try not to think, I’ve gotta head out.” 

“Joey?” Sam guesses, again already very sure of the answer. He twists the subject around only because it’s just as easy for him to rile her up as it is vice versa. It’s always good to fall back on the tried and true series of interactions, the old jokes, and the same reactions. It feels to Sam like a favorite book or movie, pages word and dog eared and VHS tape blurred from wear. Well-loved is the word.

“Or we can talk some more about your unresolved feelings?” Donna pokes him.

“Goodbye!”

Donna laughs and hangs up the phone. 

Sam wastes no time in calling CJ, and she in essence tells him the same thing. Sam thinks she and Donna and most of the girls in their intertwining groups must be connected to the same hive mind. Maybe they had a secret club the guys weren’t invited to where they swapped out information and dissections like a psych class. 

“We traded in basic human rights for a higher emotional threshold,” CJ tells him. This earns her a good laugh. CJ’s reliably dry and spot-on humor could always be counted on to re-inflate Sam.

“Seems like you guys got seriously screwed on that one.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Have fun and remember,” CJ stresses, “Don’t think too hard. Don’t spiral. Just have a good time.”

“Yes ma’am, shipping out at eighteen-hundred hours.” 

Sam stress-makes three turkey sandwiches. Wheat bread, deli meat, spinach, tomatoes, and not enough cheese. The first one was fine, but Sam couldn’t stop himself from continuing on the motions. The second was better, and then by the third, he realized they’d run out of cheese and Sam was elbow deep in tomato seeds and crumbs. He eats the sandwich without cheese while pretending to read. As if he can do anything but read the same sentence over and over again and count the minutes until Josh arrives.

_I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows._

Maybe that’s what Sam should do. Runaway and forget about his problems in the face of the grandiosity of the world. 

The doorbell rings.

Or he’d just, you know. Face them.

His problems come in the form of Josh Lyman in a green hoodie and denim jacket, loading his overnight bag into the trunk of his van and singing along badly to the radio. 

Talking to Donna and CJ had both quelled his anxieties and reformed them. He had a plan now; to find, to seek, to strive, and not to overthink himself into doing anything stupid. 

This proves to be more difficult in practice than in theory. 

“I asked if you wanted fries,” Josh whines as Sam reaches towards his basket. They’ve stopped at some greasy dive, Josh with his carcinogenic burger and Sam with his pancakes for dinner. Josh had indeed prompted Sam to get fries, but fries did not go with blueberry pancakes. 

“Fries don’t go with breakfast,” Sam protests. He knows he’s being coy, but as Donna and CJ said, live with it. Like _he_ is saying right now, he’s just gonna live with it.

“You’re a vulture. I’m gonna put ketchup all over them so you can’t touch them.”

“Now who’s being petulant?” Sam sips his soda, a can of coke from a paper straw that’s wearing away at the tip. Their setup makes him feel transported as if they’d walk out the door to a 1950’s convertible and go to a drive-in for fifty cents. Is he Sandy or Danny, Sam wonders as he takes yet another of Josh’s fries. 

This was quite like their dates from the movie, Sam realizes. The running out to be together, the eating at a diner, the sharing food. Minus their entire gang of friends dressed as greasers and pink ladies, of course. 

“I hate you,” Josh mumbles, and Sam doesn’t even think about their fight from months ago. They’ve shed that past and left it coiled to gather dusk on a bookshelf. A new skin has grown in place.

“You want some pancakes?” Sam chews down a piece. 

“I don’t eat blueberries.”

“You don’t eat any fruits or vegetables.”

“That’s for old people Samuel. I’m gonna eat burgers and fries for as long as I can. Salads are for suckers.” 

They banter and border for the rest of the night, paying the check with easy smiles to their kind old lady waitress. They tip her extra for not yelling at them when Josh flicked a french fry at Sam like it was a paper football. 

Driving to the campsite is a suspended transition. Sam takes in the road, already dark and then much darker. He can make out the shapes and shadows of trees, and then the exit sign, and then the opening of the sky as they roll to a stop in the dirt parking lot of a picnic area.

“And with only two almost-accidents, you have to ask yourself, Sam, is there nothing our hero can’t do?” 

“Parallel park?” Sam offers. It earns him a shove in the shoulder as Josh leaves to flatten the back seats and open up the trunk.

They sit cross-legged, heads tilted up to the sky like flowers waiting for rain. The world is slightly warming day by day, but so late at night the wind sends them chills, and it’s not long before they lean just a little closer and Sam pulls on his gloves. 

“What are we looking for?” Josh stage-whispers. Sam snorts and gives him a look, to which Josh raises his eyebrows in mock surprise.

“Meteors. They’ll just look like a lot of shooting stars. You can see the stars really nice from here,” Sam admits. Where he is now is nothing compared to the light pollution of San Fransisco or Sacramento, where the sky was a perpetual blue-grey instead of the necessary deep black. But out here, an hour away from any large cluster of light, the sky looks new again. Sam can’t remember the last time he saw this many stars, and so clearly. It’s enough that even Josh is content to sit in silence as they watch meteors pass by. 

“There’s so many of them,” Sam whispers.

“What?”

“The stars.” 

Sam thinks Josh might be looking at him, but he can’t drag himself away from the sky. He tries to find the constellations he knows, locating Lyra and then anything near that. He might have skimmed his astronomy book last night after Josh left. 

“There’s Lyra, up there.” Sam points and looks to his side to meet Josh’s gaze. He can barely see his face at some angles, relying on his eye’s adaptation to the light and the lines from the moon. 

“And Vega. And up there to the right,” Sam squints and points again, finger tracing invisible lines against the night, “Hercules.”

“There?” Josh points to something between Vega and Hercules’ knee. Sam, pointedly not thinking, scoots closer to Josh and moves his arm with a hand under his elbow like it’s a shotgun. 

Sam squints and lines Josh’s finger with Hercule’s foot. It’s only then, after he points him in the right direction, that he realizes they are too close. Shatteringly close. Shoulder to shoulder and nearing chest to chest, and Sam has his arm propped up behind Josh. He can, if he concentrates, hear Josh breathing. 

“That’s his foot there,” Sam says. He doesn’t know what he is going. He knows exactly what he is doing. It is simultaneously natural and horrifying, so easy to fall into and so terrifying to think about outside of each moment. 

“And if you follow that, that square is his body, see?” Sam turns from the sky to Josh’s face, expecting him to be following along with his hand. Josh is fixed on Sam, his expression half-hidden in the dark. But he is absolutely and wholly fixed on Sam. 

Sam swallows, frozen. 

“And up again, his arms there,” Sam grips Josh’s elbow just a little tighter, “and there.”

Sam’s breaths are coming in little shaking waves, shoulders moving up and down as he searches for a deeper intake of oxygen that can never come. He finally looks away from the sky as another meteor falls, back to Josh. He’s still just looking at Sam.

Sam is tempted to make a joke of some kind, the prolonged time just staring that could be on purpose for comedic effect. Sam waits for Josh to laugh, to tell Sam he’s a nerd, to ask how the hell he can see Hercules in that cartwheeled mess of light millions of millions of miles away. Burning. 

Tension, that’s what this is. The rubber ribbon between them pulled taut though to go white and snap back unless they did anything. Unless they eased up, pulled away, and slowed. Or they cut the ribbon. 

It’s then that Sam realizes what Josh is thinking. That lost yet focused look in his eyes, his shoulders rising and falling with deep breaths, lips parted like he needs to say something but hasn’t for quite a few minutes. It’s that same look, that same overwhelming and consuming state of mind Sam had all those months ago when he kissed Josh. 

“Hey Sam,” Josh says. He licks his lips and finally looks away from him. Josh’s gaze is fixed on his own crossed legs. 

“Josh.” There was nothing else to say.

“I just. I need to ask something.”

Sam just nods, slow, and not trusting his voice not to betray him.

“We’re friends again, right?”

“Yeah.” Sam doesn’t even question it, it just slides out, and that’s how they both know it’s true. 

“I still. I’m kind of- God this is harder than he said it would be, okay.” Josh laughs, shaky and in a way that shows there’s nothing funny about this. It’s a pure expression of nervous energy, so contrary to his usual show of false confidence and bravado. It’s soft and quiet and makes Sam want to lay a hand on his shoulder, just to let Josh know he’s still there. His head was in the stars but it takes that single ask from Josh to bring Sam back down to earth. 

Josh takes a deep breath and meets Sam's eyes head-on, so fierce that Sam has to look away. There’s the familiar feeling of standing off a cliff face, everything in his body screaming that he’s falling when he hasn’t even moved.

“I think- I _love_ you, Sam. I owe it to you to say it like it is.” Josh wrings his hands together.

Sam is dizzy. He grips the side of Josh’s car. There’s nothing there to hold onto but he presses against it because he doesn’t know if it will fall apart. He expects the car to collapse and Josh to vanish and to look around to realize he’s on a movie set. 

“And that’s why I did all of this. I know you like this stuff.” Josh gestures out and up to the entire sky, and at the moment Sam would believe that Josh created stars just for him to look at. Something in the slouch of his shoulders that only happened when he was nervous, about that familiar tightness in his voice and the unfamiliar softness. 

“Like I haven’t loved you since day one. That’s what I was gonna say, that day at Donna’s.” Sam nods, confirming, and fixes on the stars again. He looks for Draco. He wraps his jacket closer around his arms. He waits.

The chill comes from inside him rather than the crisp air. Sam rubs the fabric in between his fingers and bounces his leg, waiting in the silence. It’s both comfortable and not at the same time, a relic of the ease they used to find themselves in and yet loaded with electricity. If Sam stuck his tongue out like he was catching snowflakes he was sure he’d get shocked. 

There’s a sharp breath that he can’t place, and Sam feels something on his shoulder. It’s Josh’s hand, careful and tentative. He’s uncrossed his legs and shifted closer to him. 

With a sort of hassle that almost threatens to break this glass moment they find themselves in, Josh rises to his knees and reaches out to close the trunk of his car. Even though it's about the same, Sam feels the click seal them in darkness until Josh turns on the camping lantern near the front seats. The back of his car feels so much smaller, tighter like the air is waiting. 

“I’m gonna kiss you if that’s okay,” Josh whispers. It’s so quiet and strange that Sam thinks he may have imagined it, wished for it so hard he convinced himself it happened. Josh doesn’t trip over or mumble or string his words, he speaks like how he drives like how he writes like how he does everything. Sharp, messy, slamming on and off the brakes with the same determined confidence even if he knows he’s wrong. 

Sam just nods in case he’s imagining, in case it’s the yellow lights playing off Josh’s dark eyes that are fooling him. 

“Okay.”

Josh moves closer to him, and they’re sitting in front of each other cross-legged. Their knees are touching so slight Sam can’t feel anything through his jeans but he knows Josh is there. Maybe it’s not the light, because that same feeling, that hesitance, and openness are written in Josh’s every movement. 

His heart is wild, erratic, out of tune, and sending pulses of energy to the tips of his fingers. Sam is breathing slow, measured, trying to match the light rise and fall of Josh’s chest underneath his coat. Sam realizes that he’s still got his gloves on and just as he moves to take them off Josh leans in and kisses him on the cheek, just by the side of his lips. Josh’s lips are soft and Sam can feel the warmth of his breath. 

They press their foreheads together, closing their eyes and just trying to steady their breathing. Sam tosses his gloves away and places a hand over Josh’s knee, and Josh grabs onto his elbow like Sam’s a lifeboat and he’s drowning. 

“ _Sam_.” Josh trails off, his lips barely forming the curves of the word. It sounds more like breathing than anything else, and Sam realizes after a second that the word he’s looking for is prayer.

If Josh hadn’t told him just as much only a minute before, there would have been no hiding his feelings now. Josh has never talked to him like that. Sam has never had _anyone_ talk to him like that. Had anybody say his name like that. Like it’s something in another language, something to be revered, something to be whispered instead of shouted. Everything about the gentleness and the wavering makes Sam think that despite the hesitation this is the most deliberate thing Josh has ever done. 

Josh kisses him, full on the lips this time. Feather-light and barely there, and Sam grabs at Josh’s arm with his other hand. For a moment they are locked together, frozen in this single second where the world could burn and Sam wouldn’t even hear it. With his eyes closed anything that is not Josh has ceased to exist. 

“I’m gonna-” Sam breaks off when he sees that look on Josh’s face, his eyes shining and eyebrows raised like Sam just kicked his puppy.

“Take my jacket off, that’s all.” Sam can’t help but speak lower and slower, not quite whispering but not quite speaking either. 

Josh blinks a couple times and nods, scooting backward. 

Sam shoulders off his jacket, folding it into a square and placing his gloves on top of it. He’s sweating now that they’re closed in Josh’s car, and debates taking his sweatshirt off too before thinking better of it. Sam looks up just as Josh shrugs off his jacket and tosses it into the front seat. 

They each have their backs to either side of the car, and Sam uncrosses his legs with a wince. Sam doesn’t want to move on to Josh, if he really wants this he needs to make it clear. 

“Sam,” Josh says in that same soft way, hoping and asking at the same time. 

“Can I?” 

Sam nods in answer.

He takes a deep breath like he’s diving underwater before Josh kisses him again. Still gentle, still unsure, still slow not because he doesn’t know what he’s doing but exactly the opposite. Josh’s tongue is cold when he slides it against Sam’s lip, and it makes Sam laugh before Josh pushes them together again. Maybe because he's feeling brave, or maybe because he feels the exact opposite, Sam slides his hand under Josh's hoodie to meet his skin. Josh takes in a sharp breath but keeps kissing him as Sam lays his hand over his chest. His skin is warm, and Sam can feel Josh's heartbeat under his fingertips wildly counting the time. 

Josh holds onto Sam’s elbows, and slowly, surely, moves to lie down and pull Sam on top of him. There’s no walking on eggshells, no worrying about each other, no maddening questions that need to be spoken when Josh can just look at him and Sam will know. 

There’s Sam’s other hand resting on Josh’s chest, tugging at the strings of his hoodie and Josh sits up and tosses it away as he did with his coat. There are Josh’s hands up Sam’s sweatshirt and under his t-shirt, there’s Josh making those whimpers in Sam’s ear, there’s Josh with his hand pressed to the small of Sam’s back. Steady. 

“Sam _,_ ” Josh’s voice breaks in half a whimper and half a cry. It makes his heart rupture and form at the same time. Sam waits for half a second because he’s afraid if he opens his eyes from kissing down Josh’s neck they’ll disappear, that the world will be gone around him. 

“I’m here,” Sam whispers half to himself and half to Josh. 

“I know.”

“You’re here.”

“I am,” Josh whispers and tucks a strand of hair over Sam’s ear. His eyes look full and almost black from this angle, lit by the front light but shadowed by Sam lying over him. 

He is beautiful.

Sam never thought he’d catch himself saying that. About Josh or about anyone. As long as he’d known he likes guys it seemed like a different lens had to be applied to the attraction. Guys were allowed to be hot, to be handsome, on occasion to be cute. But not soft, not pretty, certainly not this unassuming and intimate plane of existence. 

But Josh is beautiful. There is no other word for it. Sam would be the one to know. 

“You remind me of someone, just now.” Sam kisses Josh again, his lips expectant and still slightly wet. Josh whines against him, and Sam’s heart summersaults. 

“Yeah ‘cause that’s what a guy wants to hear,” Josh jokes. Sam can tell there’s real insecurity behind it, however small. That’s why Josh gift-wrapped it in humor. 

“No, not like that,” Sam shakes his head. Their speech is limited to a whisper-level as if the words take up measurable space that must be conserved. 

Josh moves his hand out from under Sam’s shirt and Sam involuntarily shivers at the movement. 

“Then what?”

Josh places his hands at the back and side of Sam’s neck, fingertips running small circles at his skin and in his hair. One hand travels farther up Sam’s head and into his hair, and Sam closes his eyes. 

“It’s uh. A painting.” 

“What?”

“You’ll laugh,” Sam says. He brushes Josh’s hair back again and tilts up to kiss his forehead. 

Josh wraps his legs slightly up and around Sam’s, and it’s enough to get them together, again, faster and more desperate. Then there are those involuntary moans coming from Sam, something he always thought he’d be embarrassed by. Guys in movies were not supposed to talk, or be all lovey-dovey, or make any noises, or, well, do _anything_. A worm in his head questions whether or not Sam is doing this right.

But this is Josh, Josh pleading for him again and again, Josh giving him the stars, Josh placing himself in Sam’s hands and saying ‘I love you’ like it is the simplest thing in the world. Maybe it is. 

“It’s Vermeer.” Sam breathes heavy, trying hard to ignore the rush of cold on his back from Josh pulling off his hoodie. 

“Which one is that?” Josh’s chest is cycling up and down just as hard as Sam’s is, and he looks absolutely swept. Sam has made a mess of his already messy hair; there are dark bruises on his neck that Sam can’t actually believe he put there, those must have been a little bit there already; and his eyes are wide, dilated, completely open and at ease. 

“He’s the artist,” Sam smiles. He kisses Josh on the cheek and Josh hums, _hums_ like a happy cat or startled bee. 

“Girl with a Pearl Earring.”

“You think I look like a girl?” Josh is walking the line between fake and actually offended, and for the first time, Sam can openly admit that it’s cute.

“No, no,” Sam chuckles. 

Josh frowns. 

“It’s your eyes,” He explains. Sam traces a line down to his cheek. 

“They look similar. Same half lighting, same emotions.”

“And what would those be?” Josh tilts his head up with a smile, he is obviously not going to let the fact that Sam has directly compared him to _art_ slip by without his fair share of jokes. As if his ego needed that. 

“You have to promise not to laugh,” Sam says. He’s fighting down a smile, the same way Josh is. The humor and the elation mix into something that makes them feel isolated in the best way possible.

“Hey. I promise.” Josh turns serious, pulling down the goofy smile into one that is deeper. Again he pulls his hands out from under Sam’s shirt and focuses on running through his hair.

“Your eyes. And the painting. They're the same," Sam places a kiss just above Josh's eyes, "Open, waiting, intimate.” 

Sam swallows and then counts to three.

“Beautiful,” He whispers. 

Josh sucks in a breath and then wraps his arms around Sam in a tight, almost crushing embrace. He presses a kiss to Sam's shoulder with a collapsing sigh. 

“How am I supposed to follow that one?” Josh jokes, and laughing along with him at that moment has never felt so good. With their chests pressed together, they are one entity, shaking and grinning together. 

“You’ll find a way."

Josh kisses him.

\------------------------------------------------------

It is an ache for Sam to draw himself out of Josh’s arms and pack up his bag the next morning. His room is much colder as Sam squirms out of his pajama bottoms and into a different pair of jeans. He feels like a movie character that’s running out of a one night stand instead of a simple early bird teenager. 

“It’s too fucking early.”

Sam turns to see Josh squinting at the sun sneaking in through the blinds and yawning. His hair is sticking up in all directions, like he’d just put his finger into an electrical socket. 

“It’s ten a.m.”

“Oh, my G-dash-D I’m going back to sleep.” Josh turns away from him and curls into a ball facing the wall. 

“I gotta leave at noon.”

“And I’m awake.” Josh draws out the "and" as he rolls over much faster, sitting up straight with a tired sway. 

Sam holds a hand out to pull Josh out of bed and Josh takes it, stumbling to his feet with another yawn.

“You’re really not a morning person huh?”

“Well, usually I’m up before I can get in a REM cycle so it’s no problem.” Josh shrugs and grabs a pair of pants off his floor.

Sam sits on the edge of the bed, ignoring the chills from the cold air. He could be dropped in the middle of a snowstorm and not feel a thing. A reverse princess and the frog; kissing Josh has turned him into a frog. Could frogs regulate their body heat?  
“Are frogs poikilothermic?” 

Josh paused mid-pulling a t-shirt over his head.

“What?”

“Are frogs poikilothermic? Do their internal temperatures rely on their environment?”

“So, just cold-blooded?” Josh pulls on the t-shirt. It’s a faded light blue with an equally faded cartoon smiley face. 

“Well, yeah.”

Josh pulls another shirt out of his drawer and tosses it to Sam, who still hadn’t put a shirt on. The gooseflesh on his forearm barely registered. 

“You just thought you’d say more words when fewer could have done the trick?”

Sam took in the t-shirt Josh gave him, navy blue with bleach stains at the collar. He smiles. 

“There’s a word for that.”

“Pleonasm,” Josh says. Sam frowns as he pulls on the shirt and slips on his socks. 

“I was gonna say verbose. Prolix even.” 

“Superfluous?” Josh puts on mismatching socks and crawls into his Whalers jersey. The sleeves are only slightly too long, hiding half of his hands. It makes him look smaller, softer. 

“Ouch.”

They reheat the pot of coffee Josh’s dad started, and although nothing seems to have changed Sam avoids direct eye contact with either of Josh’s parents as they make toast. They watch TV in the basement and walk around Josh’s backyard, talking about everything and nothing, and at five to noon Sam says his thank-you's and goodbyes and finds himself back in Josh’s van. It’s just like any other time, except for when it’s not.

Except for when Josh pulls up to Sam's house and after a stolen glance at the front door and the quick mental calculation regarding the car’s window tint, Sam leans in and kisses him. Josh tastes like raspberry jam leaves a bitterness on Sam’s lips, remnants of hours-old coffee. 

They didn’t need more words. For all their time hurting each other with their words, sharpened to a point or a dull aching slice, it was nice to know when to use them and when to not. And to know how to never turn them into weapons again. 

Sam grabs his bag and feels ageless, like everything before and after this weekend has the promise of an eternity. It’s a weight-blanket of comfort. Like they will have all the time in the world to talk, all the time to sort out what this means, all the time to tell friends and family on their own terms. 

“Bye,” Josh says, car windows rolled down as the sun turns the day warmer and warmer. Sam shoulders his bag over his arm and waves at him from the curb.

“See you later.” 

And Josh drives away with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that is that! i really am thinking about writing more of these guys in this high school universe. if more samjosh or donna and joey oneshots before, during, or after this little series interest you... stay tuned! and, once more, with feeling, leave a comment with your thoughts! <3


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